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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967411">The Countercurrent</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CenturyUnited/pseuds/CenturyUnited'>CenturyUnited</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, F/M, Grumpy Twelve, Patience Required, Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy, past eleven clara, sorry lads - Freeform, the weird au that literally no one asked for</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:49:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,157</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CenturyUnited/pseuds/CenturyUnited</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of her long-time partner, Clara is left adrift and listless. That is until one day, she opens a letter from someone whose name she's never heard, and she finds herself on a strange adventure that pulls her into an impossible world that she never knew existed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It takes a bit for twelve to appear, but I hope it's enjoyable anyway! This story is extremely self-indulgent, so it's been written with my very niche tropes and interests in mind. Sorry in advance if it's not a fun read. Regardless, any feedback is extremely welcome!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She gets constant phone calls from all manner of international magazines, newspapers, wildlife conservancy groups, and news networks. They all want to know the same thing: <em>Where are you Miss Oswald? Can we offer you this pointless opportunity that won’t interest you because he’ll never be there to experience it by your side ever again?</em> (Not that they ever actually say all that, but that’s inevitably what she hears in her head).</p><p>She stopped answering the calls almost as soon as they all started coming in, but these corporations never seemed to get the message. The answer was always going to be no. Not without <em>him</em>.</p><p>---</p><p>Eventually, she gets a phone call from her super about her overflowing mailbox, which she only happens to answer because <em>he’d</em> changed her super’s ringtone in her phone to the Empire’s theme from Star Wars. (He’d thought that it matched the older man’s ‘dark side tendencies’ and the occasional reminder that she was in love with a massive dork used to make her laugh. Now, it only makes her sad). Apparently, she can get a fine for not emptying the stupid box out, and even if she <em>is</em> an award-winning photographer, she doesn’t really have the money to currently spare for a petty fine.</p><p>She dumps all of their mail onto their scuffed coffee table and wishes, for a moment, that she’d just left it all in the mailbox. Paying a fine would have been so much easier than seeing his name written next to hers on all of these envelopes.</p><p>She looks up at the blue door in their flat and sighs as she lets her head fall into her waiting hands. Their lumpy, unforgiving sofa has always been bad for her back, but she hasn’t slept in a bed in months.</p><p>---</p><p>The courage to sort through all of their mail only comes when she realizes that there must be some pressing financial matters that she has to take care of.</p><p>Most of the mail is useless—free copies of magazines to which she’d sold incredible photographs, countless coupons for takeaway, and campaign flyers for local politicians. She hesitates only slightly when she notices the newest envelopes addressed to her and her alone from her family and her friends before she throws all of them in the bin unopened, fingers trembling.</p><p>She sorts through their joint bills as she takes deep breaths and figures out what she needs to pay right away. (She also attempts to calculate how long she can wait before she inevitably has to get back to work because the world will move on with or without her, and she’d like to still be able to pay for food in a year). She gets frustrated thinking about the numbers because that used to be <em>his</em> thing, not hers.</p><p>Then, she stumbles upon a letter addressed specifically to <em>him</em> from someone named Amy Pond. She opens it.</p><p>“<em>Raggedy man,</em></p><p><em>We’re going to do a big one soon. We’d love to have you back on the team…</em>”</p><p>---</p><p>She reads the rest of the letter and feels a strange sort of confusion, like she can’t quite grasp the very core of what she’s reading because she’s already missing too much information.</p><p>The letter is dated from March of two years ago, but the postmark on the envelope indicates that it was sent within the last month. She’s not totally sure what that’s supposed to mean, and the contents of the letter itself leave much to be desired.</p><p>There’s talk of some dangerous expedition involving a team that <em>he</em> apparently used to be quite familiar with, but Clara can’t even figure out who this Amy Pond is. He’d never mentioned that name to her before, but the tone in the letter suggests that they used to be rather close.</p><p>She sets the open letter down on top of the rest of the mail and stares at it, trying to puzzle it out. There are clues littered all throughout the letter’s language, and she gets frustrated when she can’t manage to piece them together because she’s missing the larger picture. All she knows is that <em>he</em> used to be their go-to man for some risky journeys that <em>maybe</em> dealt with climbing or swimming or both. She doesn’t understand why the letter has arrived two years late, who its writer really is, and what he had to do with all of it. The fuzzy picture in her mind gives her a headache.</p><p>Sharing bad news is never easy, but she wonders if maybe it’s harder to do it through something as undeniable and as tangible as a letter. She feels her hand shake when she forces herself to write the words ‘<em>passed away</em>’ on a piece of old notebook paper. (She hates to use that phrase because it doesn’t suit him. He would never do something as acquiescent and as painfully boring as <em>that</em>, not even in death).</p><p>She doesn’t ask about their previous adventures or how they even knew each other, but she <em>does</em> ask if she can visit this mysterious team in the vague hope that it will help her feel closer to <em>him</em> somehow. She anticipates that Amy will say yes.</p><p>---</p><p>She does. Clara packs the same day that she receives Amy’s letter.</p><p>---</p><p>When she lands in windy, cold Kirkwall, the primary headline that runs through her mind is that things would be so much better if he were around (and that choosing to do this in the middle of winter might have been a bad idea). If he were with her, they would have already been on their merry way to their destination because he would have made a fast friend on their little flight who would have happily let the both of them tag along on their small trip off of the main island. They would have laughed, and he would have complained about something daft like the fact that she didn’t keep jammie dodgers in her jacket.</p><p>As it is, Clara is alone on the very last ferry of the day after a stressful rush to find some sort of shuttle to get to the correct ferry station during which she thought about him no less than two hundred different times. Her hands are freezing, and on the water, the air smells like fish. She stares down into the dark, unfathomable ocean as it reflects the light of the moon, and hopes against all hope that she’ll find some new part of him with this strange group of people who used to rely on him for something.</p><p>Staring at the imposing concrete bunker that looms in front of her as she reaches her final destination, Clara cradles her camera bag tenderly against her chest and realizes that this is the first adventure she’s embarked on without him since she was twenty-three. She used to rely on him, too.</p><p>---</p><p>She meets Amy and her husband Rory a minute after she knocks on the building’s massive metal door, and she almost instantly senses a kindred spirit in the fiery redhead that greets her with a hint of sadness at the corners of her mouth. The couple’s eyes linger on the hollow spaces that surround her in the doorway, and Clara pretends that she doesn’t feel those empty spaces pushing in on her. She’d almost forgotten that they knew him too, and she suddenly thinks that maybe some part of them had been hoping he’d be with her.</p><p>Rory’s the one that finally gestures for her to enter through the heavy, rusted door, and she gratefully rushes in from the freezing air outside. Amy’s eyes are a world of hurt after being hit with the harsh reality of their situation, so Clara relies on Rory to guide her through the winding, damp corridors of this ancient base to reach the room where she’ll be staying.</p><p>“Sorry about Amy,” he says as they stop in front of a slate gray door. “They were really close. I think part of her had been hoping that it would be some sort of nasty joke.”</p><p>“That’s okay. I wish it wasn’t real either.” She offers him a sad smile. “Thanks to both of you for letting me come here, anyway.”</p><p>Rory nods. “You and Bill are the only ones that will be living in this particular wing of the base. She’s probably talking to her girlfriend on the phone in that room down there.” He gestures further down the hall to their left, towards a room with an army green door. “She’s really great. You’ll probably get a chance to meet everyone tomorrow morning.”</p><p>Clara nods and feels her fingers drift towards her camera bag. “Thank you.”</p><p>Rory gives her a sympathetic smile and nods before awkwardly turning and walking back down the hall.</p><p>---</p><p>She gets lost the next morning trying to find this place’s equivalent of a kitchen or kitchenette or mess hall or whatever. She’d just wanted tea, and now she’d been wandering up and down a labyrinth of corridors that all looked the same for about an hour.</p><p>She stumbles upon the same huge room no less than eleven times through six <em>different</em> doors, but they’re all locked. It’s like the base is specifically designed to make this room the easiest one to find, even if an inhabitant actively <em>doesn't</em> want to find it. (She can attest to this).</p><p>Through the two doors that have smudged windows still clean enough to peak through, she isn’t able to see much more than the instantly recognizable visual of light reflecting off of water. She only really knows that the doors all lead to the same space because they all display the same number: B-012.</p><p>The next time that she stumbles upon The Forbidden Room (the apt name that she uses in her head), she feels an urge to scream. Food and company shouldn’t be this hard to find, and her randomized steps shouldn’t all lead her to this same bloody room.</p><p>Leaning her back against one of the heavy locked doors, Clara takes a deep breath and decides that it might be best if she just turns in the same direction over and over and over, dragging her fingers along the wall until she finds something.</p><p>---</p><p>She’s been turning left for five minutes when she discovers a narrow corridor that she’s positive wasn’t there before. She wanders in, and the sound of voices echoing all around her has her nearly jumping out of her skin until she remembers that voices are a <em>good</em> thing. Voices mean company and maybe even tea.</p><p>She follows the sound of chatter until she stumbles in through a door that leads to a large common area. Her eyes instantly land on the kettle that’s sat next to the shite microwave, and her fingers twitch.</p><p>“Clara! We were about to send someone down to twelve to look for you. This idiot,” Amy gestures towards her husband, “should have told you to wait in your room until someone came to get you, but it’s good to see that you’re clever enough to find this place on your own. Could use another one of those around here.”</p><p>Clara stands in the doorway a bit stunned, but she chuckles. “Er, thanks. This place is… strange.”</p><p>At this comment, a young woman with big hair and frankly amazing eyebrows jumps up from her seat. “I told you, Amy! This place doesn’t make any sense! Floor plans shouldn’t work the way they do here. I get lost <em>all</em> the time.”</p><p>“And <em>that’s</em> Bill Potts,” Rory gestures broadly with his arm.</p><p>The young woman flops back into her seat and adjusts her colorful bomber jacket. “Hi. I’m Bill. And <em>you’re</em> gorgeous. Like really, <em>properly</em> gorgeous. Wow.”</p><p>“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” Amy shoots back.</p><p>“Yes, and Heather is <em>also</em> gorgeous. Compliments are nice.”</p><p>Amy probably says something in response, but Clara doesn’t hear it. Her focus has wandered back to the sad kettle sitting on the chipped counter in the common area’s small kitchenette.</p><p>“You can help yourself, you know. We don’t bite,” a woman sitting at a small table in the corner looks from Clara to the kettle and back. “Or, at least, we don’t bite our friends.”</p><p>The woman is wearing a black jacket with its hood up, but Clara can still see that she’s got markings on her face—two thick scars that run across her cheekbones and tattooed scales that run from her temples, down her neck, and under her purple shirt to some unknown end. She’s got an olive complexion and bright blue eyes and Clara doesn’t fully realize that she’s been staring until Amy speaks up. Her face heats with embarrassment.</p><p>“Oh, that’s Vastra. She’s one of our most competent out in the field.”</p><p>She’s about to ask what Amy means by ‘out in the field’ when a short, bald man with an unbelievably fat head and dark skin stomps into the room from a door to the right. “I’ve been informed that a new boy has arrived. When shall I begin my diagnostics?”</p><p>Bill is smiling brightly at the man from her seat, like she finds his existence endlessly amusing. “Oh, mate. When will you ever figure out the whole people thing?”</p><p>“You, boy, have failed to complete your lung capacity examination.” He points a thick finger at Bill. “Do you have any last words before your summary execution?”</p><p>“Strax,” Vastra calls out. “Sit down. I do believe there are subtler ways of proceeding.”</p><p>The short man frowns as he pulls out a chair opposite her and sits. “Suit yourself.”</p><p>Clara assumes that she must look about as lost as she feels because Bill gets up and approaches her with a look of empathetic understanding.</p><p>“As you’ve probably picked up, that’s Strax. He’s not great socially, but he’s mostly harmless. He’s tough and useful most of the time, and he makes great tea. Oh, there’s loose-leaf in the cabinet there, by the way. You can feel free to use it whenever you like.” She smiles and gestures towards the old, yellowing refrigerator in the corner. “You can eat anything in there and in any of the cabinets, too. Just don’t touch the marmalade or the jaffa cakes. We do breakfast at nine and dinner at eight. I’ll show you where we do those later.”</p><p>Clara nods, though she fears she’s missed most of the valuable information that Bill just spewed out. The only things she really heard were: one, that there was tea in the cupboard and two, that touching the marmalade was a no-go.</p><p>---</p><p>Apparently, they all live at this old base for about half of the year. It’s a weird place for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it’s centered around a horrendously massive pool that she’s apparently not allowed to swim in. (Amy took her to see B-012 on her second day, unlocking one of the doors with a key that she keeps on her wrist at all times. Clara was surprised by the fact that she couldn’t see the pool’s bottom).</p><p>No one sees fit to mention the fact that they live in a place dedicated to a watery abyss, and Clara won’t admit that she’s afraid to ask.</p><p>She wonders how many times <em>he’d</em> been here with these people and whether or not he knew what it was all for. She snaps pictures of the deep, deep water and tries to understand how it's possible for a pool to make her feel so out of place.</p><p>---</p><p>It’s about a week into her visit, and Clara’s noticed a number of things.</p><p>One, Amy knew <em>him</em> almost as well as she did. It doesn’t bother her like she thought it would, and she thoroughly enjoys hearing stories about him, even if they have nothing at all to do with her. Rory walks in on her and Amy laughing about ‘stupid bowties’ more than once, and even Vastra and Strax have their own strange tales to share. (None of them ever really say his name, but Clara likes that. Saying his name now would bury his spirit right alongside his body).</p><p>Two, the sugar in the cabinets is consumed at a frankly <em>ridiculous</em> rate, which she thinks is kind of strange because Bill is the only one who she knows takes sugar in her tea, and she certainly doesn’t use the equivalent of twenty spoonfuls per day.</p><p>Three, Bill makes chips almost every night, and she always gives her a heaping serving at dinner time with a wink and a heartfelt smile. Clara suspects that the greasy food reminds her of her girlfriend.</p><p>Four, there’s always an extra plate set aside once dinner is served, and the same is done with breakfast. No one talks about it, but Clara sometimes finds the empty dishes in strange places. (Once, she’d found a plate covered in the sticky remnants of marmalade sitting next to a boiler. She’d been trying to get hotter water for the bathroom in her wing of the base when she’d seen it there, lying on the floor. She felt like she was tidying up after some delinquent ghost).</p><p>Five, Orkney is bloody freezing in the winter, and she should have packed more socks.</p><p>Six, Strax takes his job very seriously. He’s asked her to let him administer a physical exam almost nine times now.</p><p>Seven, mirrors at the base don’t work the way that they should. She can’t pinpoint what it is, but she almost feels like her reflection is delayed somehow and that rooms always look <em>bigger</em> than they really are. Sometimes, looking in the mirror for too long induces vertigo. (She considers that letting Strax do his job might not be the worst idea).</p><p>Eight, B-012 is <em>always</em> locked. She tries to hypothesize all the possible reasons why a pool might be dangerous enough to keep under constant lock and key, but all she comes up with is sharks.</p><p>Nine, Rory is hopelessly in love with his wife. Occasionally, he looks at Clara like he just doesn’t understand how she’s there—living and breathing and talking with them—after having lost what he assumes is her personal equivalent of Amy. Those looks make her sad sometimes, but mostly she thinks his utter devotion to his wife is sweet.</p><p>Ten, mapping the base is a futile exercise. She’s becoming more and more certain that the rooms move. There are strange corners all over the base that don’t make physical sense, and yet, she’s having a harder and harder time remembering what a normal corner might look like. The dimensions of all the rooms feel strange, and even her professional camera struggles to capture the way that space seems to warp around the edges. There are a number of corridors that feel like they disappear and reappear constantly but irregularly. (She finds the greatest number of abandoned dinner plates in those places. She's decided it's all pants).</p><p>Eleven, the number of jaffa cakes in the cupboard steadily decreases, but she doesn’t ever see anyone touching them.</p><p>Twelve, there is almost certainly someone living at the base that she hasn’t met yet. (She comes to this conclusion when she finds a pair of hideous tartan trousers left on a drying line in the laundry room).</p><p>---</p><p>She’s sitting on the floor facing one of the many corners of the base that defy general logic, strategically and methodically trying to capture the <em>wrongness</em> of the space with her camera by using different angles, when she hears two sets of footsteps come to a sudden stop behind her.</p><p>“Who is <em>this</em>?” The unfamiliar voice is decidedly male and decidedly cross.</p><p>She rotates in her seated position and comes face to face with black tartan trousers bunched up around a pair of old boots. She thinks to herself that this is probably the person that she’s been expecting to meet. Amy’s trainers are already familiar.</p><p>“Doctor, this is Clara. Clara, the Doctor.”</p><p>The angry mess of scowling eyebrows blows right past the introduction. “So? What is she doing <em>here</em>?”</p><p><em>“She’s</em> sitting right here.” Clara doesn’t need a spokesperson, thank you very much. She stands. “And I’m just visiting.”</p><p>His head whips down to make eye contact with her. (He’s tall). “Can you dive?”</p><p>“What, like into a pool?”</p><p>The gangly pile of limbs turns back towards Amy, and his eyebrows achieve a level of fierce exasperation that Clara’s never seen before in her life. “You’re kidding, Pond.”</p><p>“No, Doctor, I’m not. She asked to come, I said yes, and she’s not leaving. She’s not in anybody’s way.” Amy crosses her arms and gives him a look, daring him to challenge her.</p><p>He flaps his arms out. “How can you say that when she’s clearly drinking all the tea?” He pauses, and his frown deepens. “Wait, is <em>she</em> the one that keeps moving my dinner plates about?”</p><p>In that moment, Clara’s almost certain that this is all a hallucination that has resulted from staring at impossible corners for too long. The delinquent ghost of her imagination has officially taken shape, and he’s appropriately pale.</p><p>“What are you on about? She’s here for as long as she likes, and that’s final. This place is so big and so confusing that you don’t even have to see her if you don’t want to.”</p><p>Doctor Vexed huffs out an annoyed sigh and looks back down at Clara. “<em>Don’t</em> touch the plates. I’m collecting data.”</p><p>She frowns. “Data on what?”</p><p>“It’s research. It’s not for pudding brains to know.” He glances at her camera. “What are you doing with <em>that</em>?”</p><p>She cradles her favorite Nikon protectively against her chest and glances back at the wall. “The corners are all wrong.”</p><p>“Of course they’re not wrong! Amy, —” Clara watches as he realizes that his fellow Scot left him behind to fend for himself. He turns back towards her with a renewed frown. “They’re not <em>wrong</em>. They’re just bigger than they should be. One day, I’m going to flood this place.”</p><p>“Flood? Why?” Miscreant wraith, this one was.</p><p>“Weren’t you listening? Internal dimensions!” He pointedly flaps his arms towards the corner she’d been methodically trying to document.</p><p>She thinks, absurdly, that she actually follows his train of thought. She bends down to pick up her camera bag. “So, why diving?”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>She understands that it’s not really an answer, but she thinks that she just might be getting a better idea of what this team actually does.</p><p>---</p><p>Sometimes, as she explores the base, she displaces the plates that she finds by roughly a meter in a random direction to see if he notices.</p><p>Of course, he does. He leaves an angry, nonsensical note taped to her and Bill’s bathroom door.</p><p>“<em>If we were in space, this would be considered academic sabotage. Please keep your tiny hands away from my research.</em></p><p>
  <em>P.S. There’s a particularly impossible corner by C-135. You should see it, but tell your camera to be careful. I think the corners are getting angry.</em>
</p><p><em>P.P.S. Bill, you still owe me your report on the physics of buoyancy. I will not be accepting a song this time.</em>”</p><p>---</p><p>In all the time that Clara’s been at the base, she’s rarely slept through the night. During her first week, she spends the small hours of the morning in her room, transferring new photographs from her camera to her drive on her laptop. She goes through her best shots and makes minor edits to coloring and exposure, whiling the hours away doing something familiar in a very strange place.</p><p>(Her C-135 series has become one of her all-time favorites. There’s something almost <em>eerie</em> about the spatial impossibility that she managed to capture, and she’s quite proud of herself for it. <em>Not</em> that she’d ever thank that grumpy mop of gray hair for the suggestion).</p><p>Recently, though, Clara’s taken to spending her sleepless nights sitting in the common area with a nice cup of tea. She learns very quickly that the base’s errant ghost can be found there at any time between 3 and 4 am. He’s usually doing some mixture of drinking sugary tea (she swears that she’s seen him add seven spoonfuls of sugar to a single mug, which is both appalling and impressive), eating jaffa cakes covered in extra marmalade, scribbling on random pieces of paper, and/or fiddling with gadgets that she suspects serve no real purpose.</p><p>Tonight, it’s jaffa cakes and something that looks like it used to be a calculator. There are extra wires and tiny bulbs littered all over his favored table.</p><p>As she wanders in, he greets her with his characteristic sour frown, which she laudably ignores with an indifferent shrug. She heads towards the kettle and pulls a smuggled bag of Earl Grey out of the kangaroo pouch on her jumper.</p><p>“For a human, you don’t sleep very much. This is the fourth night that you’ve invaded my tea time.”</p><p>Clara has learned to ignore his many peculiarities in speech, including, but not limited to, using the word ‘human’ to describe what she assumes is just a normal person. She goes about cleaning her mug like she normally does and answers him without looking in his direction.</p><p>“Invaded seems a little strong, don’t you think? I’m just making a cuppa. Perfectly silently before <em>you</em> spoke, I might add. Why can’t this be my tea time, too?”</p><p>“Don’t be stupid. You can’t eat my jaffa cakes.” He says this like not being able to eat his biscuits has only one natural conclusion, and that is that <em>his</em> tea time will not be becoming <em>their</em> tea time. “Where did you get the Earl Grey?”</p><p>“I brought some,” she answers proudly as she watches her tea steep in her fresh mug of perfectly heated water.</p><p>He huffs in response and goes back to tinkering in silence.</p><p>After about three minutes—when she deems that her tea has reached its peak—she pulls the bag out, pours a spot of milk in, and sits down at his table. (This is something that she usually avoids doing in favor of being diplomatic, but tonight, she feels like pushing his many buttons).</p><p>His fingers twitch on the pliers he’s holding as she sets her tea down on his workspace, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s attaching tiny light bulbs to a number of wires that point in different directions, and she wonders what in the world he thinks this new thing is actually going to do.</p><p>“What is that?”</p><p>“It’s a tracker.”</p><p>“For what?”</p><p>“World hoppers.”</p><p>“What are world hoppers?”</p><p>He looks up from his work and scowls fiercely at her. “Do you always ask so many questions? Go back to drinking your tea.”</p><p>“Not until you explain world hopping.”</p><p>“Aren’t you supposed to be clever?” At that, she shoots him a murderous glare, and he sighs in submission before actually answering. “It’s what it sounds like. It’s hopping between worlds. It’s a lot like walking from your room to this room, but bigger and weirder.”</p><p>“Funny. Am I supposed to believe that there are multiple worlds out there and human beings can just travel between them? I mean, I knew you were a little different, but that’s just nonsense.”</p><p>“Who said anything about humans?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Humans. They’re not the ones doing the world hopping.”</p><p>“Am I dreaming? Am I actually asleep right now? <em>Oh my god</em>, have I <em>finally</em> fainted in front of a mirror? I knew it would happen! Those things are a bloody <em>menace</em>.”</p><p>She starts pinching her arms and gently slapping her cheeks, and he watches her do this for a full fifteen seconds in absolute bewilderment before recovering his ability to speak.</p><p>“What in the name of jelly babies are you doing? Stop that. Stop the pinching.”</p><p>She looks up at him, and he’s frowning like he always is. She checks the rest of her surroundings. The table seems steady, her tea is steaming, and the room looks normal (as normal as possible in this base, anyway). She’s very much awake. She shakes her head to clear it and nods to herself, mentally recalibrating and taking the reins.</p><p>“Right. So. World hopping. Real thing, according to you. Humans aren’t involved.”</p><p>“Are you malfunctioning? Should I go get Amy or something?” He stands from his seat at the table and pulls a whirring stick-thing out of his jacket pocket. He points it at her head.</p><p>“Nope. No need for Amy. I’m perfectly fine.” She tolerates his hopping about with his stick gadget for about ten seconds before she finally addresses it. “What are you doing?”</p><p>“You don’t have a fever, and you don’t have a case of the Countercurrent spins. Not that you would have those, because you’ve never been there, but you never know with this old base. The mirrors are tricky when they’re furious.”</p><p>Counter-something spins, places to which she’s apparently never been, and angry mirrors. Scratch that. <em>Furious</em> mirrors that might take her some place. Or something. What? The whirring and the words and Doctor Ghost were making it hard to think.</p><p>“Not that I’m not absolutely loving whatever this is, but can we start speaking in sentences that actually make sense now?”</p><p>“What do you mean?” He sounds offended. “I <em>am</em> making sense!”</p><p>“Fine, then. Just stop talking. Stop talking about hopping and mirror spins and angry currents or whatever.”</p><p>He rolls his eyes. “Oh, it’s a rollercoaster with you tonight, isn’t it?” He waves his hands about. “First, you won’t stop asking me questions, and now you don’t want the answers. Just drink your tea.”</p><p>Clara frowns angrily at him but feels chastened enough to actually do as she’s told.</p><p>---</p><p>She’s agreed to a comprehensive physical and general health examination. It has nothing to do with the motion sickness of being at the base. She’s just tired of Strax’s relentless requests.</p><p>She’s sat on a bench in a room that looks remarkably like a proper doctor’s office and Strax is asking her to take her hat off for the fourth time.</p><p>“It’s not a hat, Strax. It’s hair. Can we just move on?”</p><p>“Very well. I will overlook your hat for now.” He pulls out something that looks a bit like a magnifying glass and points it at her forehead. “Oh, now that’s interesting. Definitely a foolish human female. Twenty-eight years old, narcissistic, lots of bow ties.”</p><p>“What are you looking at?”</p><p>He doesn’t answer and moves to point the magnifying glass at her eye. “Say ah.”</p><p>“Aaah?”</p><p>“You didn’t move your lips, Miss Clara.”</p><p>“You’re looking at my eye.”</p><p>“Ah, yes. Easy mistake. Onto the thorax.” His right eye appears huge and unblinking through the looking glass as he sweeps it up and down her body. “Well, you have an excellent spleen and exemplary bones. Lung capacity is subpar, but that is to be expected in your weak and fleshy body.”</p><p>She tries not to be offended by his words because she doesn’t think he quite understands how they’re supposed to be used. “Why are you doing this?”</p><p>“If we are going to dive together, I need you in peak physical prowess.”</p><p>“You lot certainly like to talk about diving. Tell me. What’s the ocean like down below?”</p><p>“Stupid boy. We dive through the Countercurrent, not your ocean with its pathetic creatures.” He places the looking glass back in his pocket and stands. “Now. Time to test your vertical jump. Your stature means you’ll need it to best your enemies in battle.”</p><p>The more she talks to this strange team of people, the less confident she becomes in her supposition of what it is that they do. Deep sea diving no longer seems to fit the bill, but she doesn’t have the slightest idea what ‘countercurrent’ is.</p><p>---</p><p>The minty taste and familiar texture of toothpaste fills her mouth as she absentmindedly scrubs her teeth to wash out the remnants of her nightly cup of tea. (She struck a truce with Doctor Vexed a few nights ago, and tonight, he even went as far as offering her one of his precious jaffa cakes. He made sure she understood that the biscuit didn’t mean he wanted to share his tea time, but she considered it very real progress anyway).</p><p>She bends down to rinse her mouth out at her favored sink and feels her heart stop painfully when she stands back up. There’s a woman, an absolute stranger with an evil glint in her eye, leaning against the wall behind her in the mirror.</p><p>She whips her head around and holds her toothbrush out like a weapon, but there’s no one there. It’s just her like it always is. She feels her hands shake as she hesitantly approaches the toilets lined up behind her and listens for any signs of movement. As quickly as she can manage, she kicks the cubicle doors open and finds them all to be empty. Even the showers are unoccupied.</p><p>She rushes out of the bathroom with her back facing the mirror and her heart beating savagely against her ribcage. She won’t admit that she’s afraid to look at something as harmless as a reflection.</p><p>---</p><p>“Do you ever see people in the mirrors when you’re using the loo?” She poses her question as casually as she can and sips from her fresh morning tea.</p><p>Bill turns to look at her with an alerted frown coloring her features. “Have you seen someone in the mirrors, Clara?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I saw a woman standing behind me a few days ago, but I checked the bathroom afterwards, and I was alone. I thought maybe I was seeing things because it was late and I was sleepy, but I just saw the same woman again this morning.”</p><p>“Interesting, I’ve only ever heard him mention a man.” She chews thoughtfully on her buttered toast.</p><p>“What? Who mentioned what?”</p><p>“The Doctor. You should talk to him about this. He’ll know what to do.” Bill grabs her hand and pulls her up from her chair. “Come on, I’ll show you one of his hiding spots.”</p><p>Bill guides her through a number of corridors that she’s never seen before, and Clara suspects that that’s intentional. (She would think that the base hides things from certain people if the very idea wasn’t totally barmy. The place is impossible and strange in every way, but sentience is a step too far, even for her). After about five minutes, they make their final turn into a damp hallway with slimy walls and head towards a door that’s painted in a pristine royal blue.</p><p>Bill knocks on the door four times, and a familiar Scottish voice calls out from the inside.</p><p>“Bill, not now. I’m trying to work out why the A minor chord makes my fingers feel numb. I think it’s spread to my feet.”</p><p>Heedless of his warning, both of them barge into his room and see him sitting atop an amp with a guitar, shaking out his left hand by his side as if his arm has fallen asleep. He turns to look at his intruder, and when his eyes land on Clara, he lets his arm go limp and turns a particularly bothered scowl towards Bill.</p><p>“What is she doing here?”</p><p>Clara speaks before Bill even opens her mouth. “I’ve seen a woman in the mirror.”</p><p>“Nonsense.” He waves his hand as if to clear the preposterous idea from the air. “The Master looks like a man.”</p><p>“The Master?”</p><p>“A world hopper,” he answers as he continues strumming his guitar.</p><p>“You mean the woman I’ve seen isn’t a human? She certainly looks like one.”</p><p>He stops playing and turns his full attention to her. “The woman you’ve seen isn’t the Master.”</p><p>“How would you know? If this Master isn’t human, why couldn’t they change shape or whatever?”</p><p>“Have you gone <em>bananas</em>?” He frowns at her like she’s said something completely out of the realm of possibility, which she finds mildly frustrating given that they’re currently having a genuine discussion about ‘world hopping’. “We aren’t shapeshifters. This isn’t Harry Potter.”</p><p>“What do you mean <em>we</em>?”</p><p>“I’m a world hopper, too.”</p><p>“Okay. Right. Sure.” She’ll deal with that information later. “Then who am I seeing in the mirror?”</p><p>“I don’t know. This isn’t supposed to be happening. This is all wrong. The time is all <em>wrong</em>.” He’s started pacing about his cluttered space and stops to flap his arms in her direction. “Why you? What’s so special about <em>you</em>?”</p><p>“Oi! It’s not like I asked for this.”</p><p>He’s rifling through piles and piles of books, seemingly looking for something in particular, until he suddenly stops and starts snapping his fingers. “Wait, wait. Shut up. Shut up.” He turns to look at her with an intensity that gives her goosebumps. “Why did you come to this base?”</p><p>“I came to visit Amy. I don’t know, I guess I thought it would help.” She feels her cheeks flush in self-consciousness.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“What do you mean ‘<em>no</em>’?”</p><p>“I mean no. Why did you come <em>here</em> specifically? How did you know about this place? No one knows about this place.”</p><p>“I got a letter from Amy. Or, well. <em>He</em> got a letter from Amy.” She swallows. “I sent a response to the return address in Inverness explaining the… <em>situation</em>, and she wrote back with the directions to get here.”</p><p>“How do you know that the first letter was from Pond?”</p><p>“It was signed from her. The return address was correct. I mean, she got my letter, didn’t she?”</p><p>The tip of his tongue hangs out of his mouth as his fingers tug on his mess of curls, and he continues his pacing. “Was there anything in your letter that would have suggested that it was written as a response to something?”</p><p>Clara thinks back, but she can’t remember the specifics. She thinks she probably wrote something along the lines of: <em>Hello Amy. My favorite person is dead. You knew him. I know you don’t know me, but can I visit?</em></p><p>“Er, no. I guess not. I just told her the bad news and asked if I could meet her.”</p><p>He leans his arms against a desk and hangs his head. “This could be bad. Very bad. Bill, go get Pond.”</p><p>---</p><p>Amy rushes in with Rory at her heels, and they’re both panting like they ran through the base’s maze to get here. The redhead’s eyes find the Doctor with a sense of urgency. “What’s going on? Is he back?”</p><p>“Pond. I need you to think very carefully. Do you remember having written a letter to your best pal around the time that he died?”</p><p>Her eyebrows push together in confusion, but she answers anyway. “No. I haven’t written to him in almost two years.”</p><p><em>Two years.</em> Two years? Tiny bells start to go off in Clara’s mind. She jumps in before the other two can say anything else. “Wait. That first letter I got. It was roughly two years old. You mentioned something about some big expedition in it, I think.”</p><p>Amy frowns and starts shaking her head. “No. No that can’t be. I posted that letter as soon as I wrote it.”</p><p>“I swear I got it just recently. It’s the reason I wrote you in the first place. Maybe—”</p><p>The brooding stick insect cuts her off. “Shush, shush, shush. I’m missing something. What am I missing? What am I <em>not seeing</em>?”</p><p>A tense silence settles oppressively over them, and everyone’s eyes land on him. He’s pulling at his hair and biting his thumb and scowling violently at his boots as he paces. His eyes bounce around the room restlessly like he’s trying to find the pieces to some puzzle that no one else can see, and he’s a veritable storm of restless motion and scattered thoughts.</p><p>Then, very suddenly, he stops. He stands extremely still.</p><p>“Your boyfriend. How did he die?”</p><p>“Er. He came home from one of his trips one night and never woke up. The doctors weren’t able to tell me much.”</p><p>His hands twitch at his sides. Slowly, he turns towards Clara, and the intensity in his blue-gray eyes causes the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up. “I think your boyfriend got caught up in something that he didn’t understand. I think the woman in the mirror probably had something to do with it. And I’m certain that she’s orchestrated this whole thing just to get you here.”</p><p>She tries to swallow past the dryness in her mouth. “Who is she?”</p><p>“I’m afraid of who she might be.” He rubs his face. “And if I’m right, she wants nothing good.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This really was originally a two chapter story, but there are certain elements that I wanted to add, so now it's three chapters. Sorry lads, but hopefully it's worth the extension!  Any feedback is very welcome.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s sitting at a rickety desk that smells like damp wood in a room that looks like it might have been an office in a past life. A collection of books and trinkets is piling up near her feet as her tutor haphazardly throws things out of an old chest in search of chalk.</p><p>“Stupid box, always eating <em>my</em> things. Why don’t you eat the green one’s stuff? It’s much less important.”</p><p>She laughs quietly to herself at this ranting pile of gangly limbs until she’s suddenly hit with the fact that she’s entirely unfazed by his conversation <em>with a chest</em>. Her laughter awkwardly dies in her throat, and her eyes widen. This is only their fourth night of these lessons, and she can’t pinpoint when exactly she came to so readily accept the absurdity of her current life. (Some tiny part of her is terrified by the fact that she now finds this absolute nonsense normal, but a much larger part of her enjoys that the chaos lets her <em>forget</em>).</p><p>“What’s wrong with your face? Get your eyes under control.”</p><p>She shakes off her disconcerting moment of clarity and looks up at him. He’s standing in front of the blackboard with a single piece of chalk in his hand now, and his eyebrows are pushed together in offended confusion like he can’t understand her facial expression and is irritated by not knowing something.</p><p>“Nothing’s wrong with my face,” she protests. “Anyway, <em>you’re</em> the one with the attack eyebrows.”</p><p>Almost as if to prove her point, he shoots her a glare before turning back towards the chalkboard, muttering something about a face that’s too wide and a funny nose. He writes his fourth rule about navigating the world of the Countercurrent in large, angry letters across the board. (After the team’s conversation about the woman in the mirror, it was decided that Clara had to learn about this other universe for her own safety. Much to his displeasure, he was unanimously volunteered to be her tutor).</p><p>She looks down at the wrinkled, water-logged notebook that he’d given her during their first lesson, and she adds a number four.</p><p>
  <em>1) Do not tell anyone your real name.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>2) Do not trust anyone outside of our party.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>3) Do not wander off.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>4) Do not talk to the Master. Not ever.</em>
</p><p>---</p><p>“What <em>are</em> you, exactly?”</p><p>It’s 3:35 am, and she’s warming her hands on her cuppa while he messes about with a series of paperclips using fingers still slick with his own saliva. Tonight, he offered her two whole Jaffa cakes that he deemed ‘defective’, and she shared one of her precious bags of Earl Grey in return. (He still insists that this isn’t <em>their</em> tea time, but she’s seen him lick marmalade from his fingers too many times to accept his conclusion).</p><p>He looks up briefly from his tinkering to make eye contact with her. “I’m the Doctor.”</p><p>His answer indicates that she won’t be getting a straight answer to her original question, so she adapts. “Is that your codename? Like the fake name you use in the Countercurrent or whatever?”</p><p>He frowns at the very idea. “No.”</p><p>“Then what <em>is</em> your codename?”</p><p>The sides of his mouth tilt up in amusement as he answers, “Doctor Disco.”</p><p>She thinks that she’s built up an ungodly amount of patience just from spending time with this delinquent wraith.</p><p>---</p><p>A gray, threadbare sheet stops her from seeing her reflection in the mirror as she brushes her teeth at her favored sink.</p><p>After the fourth time that Clara saw the lady in purple, Bill helped her cover the mirrors in their wing’s bathroom with sheets that they’d found in a random wardrobe. She isn’t quite sure that the sheets serve much of a purpose, but Doctor Ghost insisted that they would prevent a large amount of information from ‘leaking’ into the wrong hands.</p><p>Whether it’s successful with the ‘leaking’ or not, the thin fabric doesn’t alleviate the feeling of being watched. Any time that she’s close to a mirror, Clara feels a set of eyes <em>burning</em> into the back of her neck. There’s something distinctly unsettling about the thought that there’s someone hiding in the folds of the space that she’s in. No matter how hard she tries, she can never unfold the complicated mess of dimensions well enough to see her intruder.</p><p>Sometimes though, at night, when she closes her eyes and focuses on the feeling that someone else is <em>there</em>, she swears that she can smell a repulsive combination of strong lavender soap and rotting fish flesh. The smell is reminiscent of the lady in purple in ways that she can’t explain. The sharp, almost cloying femininity and the putrid sense of decay allude to something old, something that lingers with death, something that likes to look pretty.</p><p>---</p><p>She’d been sitting at her usual desk—waiting for the appearance of Doctor Ghost and taking pictures of their makeshift classroom—when he rushed in twenty minutes late, frantically flapped his arms at her, and rushed back out. Frowning at his utter lack of communication beyond that, she hung her camera on her neck and followed him.</p><p>(She won’t admit that she’s weirdly comforted by his ill-mannered mayhem. His lessons are now her favorite part of being at the base, and that makes her feel dreadfully guilty. She came here in hopes of finding some new part of <em>him</em>, of feeling closer to <em>him</em>. Not to dive head first into this stick insect’s frenzy in an attempt to forget and distance herself from the grief. She does her best not to think about it too much).</p><p>“Why is B-012 always locked?”</p><p>She’s watching the red lining of his favorite coat flutter behind him as he guides her through the base, and she’s rushing to keep up with him as they wander past The Forbidden Room.</p><p>“Because it’s a gateway for those who can’t simply hop between worlds.”</p><p>He pivots on his heel to round a corner. He’s taken at least seven consecutive right turns so far, and she wonders if they’ll ever be turning left.</p><p>“Are you from the Countercurrent?”</p><p>He takes his whirring stick-gadget out of his pocket and points it at a door to their right. “It’s complicated.”</p><p>She frowns at his non-answer but moves on. “I still don’t get why we need a fake name to go there. Names are just names, aren’t they? I mean, even the bloke at my local chippy knows mine.”</p><p>The door clicks as something inside it unlatches, but he doesn’t open it. Instead, he pauses and turns to look right at her, meeting her gaze with that unique, vibrating intensity of his. “Knowing and saying someone’s name is a powerful thing. It can save someone’s life, and in the Countercurrent, it can end that life, too. Don’t ever underestimate the power of a name.”</p><p>For some reason, she thinks back to <em>him</em> right then. She thinks about the fact that she hasn’t uttered his name aloud since he died, not even to herself. Her mind recoils and shrinks away from that topic. She swallows.</p><p>“Is your name really the Doctor?”</p><p>“It’s the only name that matters to me.”</p><p>“Will you tell me your diving name, then?”</p><p>He smirks and keeps his eyes trained on her as he opens the door and gestures in towards what looks to be a caretaker’s shed. “The Eyebrows.”</p><p>“A storeroom?”</p><p>“No. Is your hearing faulty? The Eyebrows.” He waggles them for emphasis. “See, I think I could take bottle tops off with these.”</p><p>“No, I understand the name, you oaf.” She gestures past the door. “I’m talking about the room.”</p><p>His eyes widen, and he whips his whole body around to look inside. He scowls fantastically. “Oh no. No, no, no. I hate being wrong in public. Everybody forget that happened.”</p><p>She watches as he runs off down the corridor and turns right. Again. Laughing earnestly, she thinks about all of the codenames that he’s given her.</p><p>So far, she’s gathered: Doctor Disco, Doctor Funkenstein, The Magician, Doctor Idiot, Doctor Mysterio, Special Agent Dan Dangerous, Oncoming Storm, Basil, and now, The Eyebrows.</p><p>They were all delivered with the exact same amused smile and raised brows.</p><p>She’s only ruled out one. And she’s not even certain about that.</p><p>---</p><p>Vastra is staring curiously in their direction as Doctor Ghost argues with Strax about the physical requirements of Clara’s potential diving equipment. Turns out, if things go from bad to worse, there might be an actual need for them all (herself included) to go to the Countercurrent, and she’s the only one around without an actual suit or any gear to speak of.</p><p>The argument is less than two minutes in when Clara decides that she doesn’t want to hear about breath cyclers and directional inverters any more than she absolutely has to. She wanders over to the woman standing by the wall instead.</p><p>“They’re a bit ridiculous, those two.” Clara makes her statement in an attempt to engage with what she believes is the reason for the curious glint in Vastra’s intelligent, blue eyes.</p><p>“I don’t believe I have ever seen him quite like this.”</p><p>“Who, Strax? I don’t know… Isn’t he always a little, er, battle-ready?”</p><p>“I was not referring to Strax. I was speaking of the Doctor.” Vastra tilts her head in his direction as he scowls and waves a metal device in Strax’s face.</p><p>“What do you mean? Attack eyebrows, wild hair, and pale as a ghost? Seems about right to me.” She smiles at her own joke.</p><p>Vastra turns to look at her then, and there’s a certain sort of anger and disappointment in her eyes that Clara doesn’t understand in the least. Vastra maintains her rigid posture as she responds. “Not everything about a person can be found on their surface.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You’re a young, <em>pretty</em> thing, and so was <em>he</em>. I wouldn’t expect you to be accustomed to seeing beyond a veil. Beyond someone’s scars or markings or lined skin.”</p><p>Clara glowers as a spark of indignation flares within her. “How dare you? Don’t presume to know anything about me just because I’ve turned your head. I <em>know</em> that people aren’t encompassed by their appearance. I don’t <em>care</em> about your scars or his gray hair or Strax’s big head. I never have.”</p><p>Vastra’s entire countenance communicates shock at her spirited response, but she quickly shakes it off with an appreciative nod in Clara’s direction. “Very well, then. I suppose you’re simply at a disadvantage when it comes to the Doctor. You didn’t know him before.”</p><p>“Before what?”</p><p>Vastra tilts her head as she considers the question. “Well. Before you, I suppose.”</p><p>---</p><p>“Yeah, you know.” Clara gestures vaguely as she gently sets her Nikon down on the table. “That nauseating smell in the bathroom.”</p><p>“Listen, mate, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. I mean, sure, that bathroom isn’t exactly posh, but it definitely doesn’t smell like dead fish.”</p><p>Bill pulls a disgusted face, and Clara chuckles despite her nerves. She fiddles with the camera’s strap as she asks her next question.</p><p>“Do you ever get the feeling that someone’s watching you in there? Even with the sheets up?”</p><p>“Not really. Never was the most observant, though. I fatted a crush of mine once, and it was months before I noticed. Gave her too many chips.”</p><p>Clara’s eyes widen. “Wait, what?”</p><p>“Never mind.” Bill sheepishly scrunches her nose and continues. “So. You feel watched when you’re in there. Do you think the smell is related to that feeling?”</p><p>“I don’t know… They might be connected. It’s hard to say.”</p><p>“You do know you have to tell the Doctor about this eventually, right? If the smells are tied to the woman in the mirror, this whole thing could be <em>really</em> bad. It might mean she’s starting to spill into this world, or that you’re starting to bleed into hers.”</p><p>Clara tries to brush it off. “Maybe it’s nothing.”</p><p>“Could be.” Bill shrugs. “But it’s better to know now than to find out months later. Trust me.”</p><p>---</p><p>He let her into B-012 for their nightly lesson with a key that he keeps on a string tied around his neck.</p><p>He made her carry a box full of beakers and syringes and funnels from one of his many secret rooms, and he spent their whole lesson showing her why the liquid in the bottomless pool wasn’t quite the same as normal water. Clara spent most of the time either asking questions or wishing that she’d brought her camera.</p><p>Now, with their lesson apparently over (not that he makes it a point to actually <em>tell</em> her that), he’s sitting on the edge of the pool with his tartan trousers cuffed up to his knobby knees, and his feet are swishing about in the water.</p><p>She watches his gangly legs swing back and forth for all of ten seconds before she realizes that she’s never seen this much of his skin. She’s shocked by how incredibly pale it truly is and by how much it hugs his angular bones and ropey muscles.</p><p>She’s almost moved by how strangely human and <em>normal</em> it makes him seem, and she decides to join him by the edge of the pool, roughly pulling the denim of her trousers up past her calves.</p><p>The coldness of the water takes her breath away as she dips her feet in. “This water is <em>freezing</em>, how can you stand it?”</p><p>“My body is naturally colder than yours.” He tilts his head and purses his lips as he inspects her feet swishing in the water next to his own. “Are your legs really that short?”</p><p>“My legs aren’t short!”</p><p>“Ah, that’s right. Keep your spirits up.” He smirks to himself as he continues playing with the water at his feet. A pause. “Can I show you something?”</p><p>“Depends. You’re not going to shove me into this pool, are you?”</p><p>“Of course not.” A perplexed frown. “Why would I want to do that? Humans go all pruny in water. It’s very off-putting.”</p><p>Her nose wrinkles at his response, but she’s curious. “Then yes.”</p><p>A keen excitement brightens his countenance as he rapidly turns towards her in his seated position. “Right. Don’t move. Keep your tiny, human feet very still.”</p><p>She observes him as he shuts his eyes in concentration until she feels something start moving by her ankles. She whips her head down to look at her feet and watches in unadulterated awe as the water in B-012 starts to climb up from her submerged ankles in tiny rivulets that carve out special shapes on her legs. She watches, mesmerized, as the complicated, concentric circles shift and swirl and dance across her skin.</p><p>“Can I touch them?” Her voice sounds breathless, but she doesn’t care.</p><p>He opens his eyes and looks at her with a proud sort of contentment. He hesitantly offers his hand. “Palm up.”</p><p>Gently, she places the back of her hand into his palm, and he guides it towards the surface of the pool.</p><p>She gasps as the water starts to build a gravity-defying bridge up to her extended fingers. When the water makes contact with her fingertips, she smiles the most brilliant smile that she’s managed to produce in ages. She can feel her own dimples make an eager appearance. “How?”</p><p>“You asked me once if I was from the Countercurrent. I’m not. But <em>this</em>, this passage to that other world, it’s made up of the same stuff as me. The same energy, the same connection to other times and other places.” The back of his hand and the water dancing across her fingers begin to glow the slightest bit golden. “It’s what makes me a world hopper.”</p><p>“This is <em>amazing</em>. I had no idea.”</p><p>His eyes crinkle in mirth as he shoots her a lopsided smirk. “Perfectly normal. I’m a lot to estimate.”</p><p>She shakes her head and laughs. “You’re daft.”</p><p>He gently lets her go, and the water continues to weave between her fingers. She distinctly feels the air where his cool palm had been resting against the back of her hand, and she realizes then that they’d never touched before.</p><p>Cold? Yes. Ghost? Most definitely not.</p><p>---</p><p>“<em>No</em>.” Clara watches from afar as he resolutely shakes his head. “It’s too soon.”</p><p>“Doctor, we have to do this.” Amy sounds apologetic, but her voice brooks absolutely no argument. “Clara’s life is in danger now. Bill told you about the smells. We can’t wait any longer.”</p><p>“No. She’s not ready. I haven’t had enough time. She doesn’t <em>know</em>.”</p><p>Clara’s brow furrows as she stands in the shadowed, too-big space of the impossible corner at the edge of the room. Doesn’t know what? (She’s not proud of eavesdropping, but they barged in during one of her corner-focused photography sessions, and her curiosity was very quickly piqued).</p><p>“She’ll find out whether we go now or go later. If we go now, at least she has a chance of coming out of this alive. Us too.”</p><p>“If we go right now, she might bring about all of our deaths anyway. No.”</p><p>“<em>Doctor</em>.” Amy grabs his arm, and he flinches. “We <em>have</em> to do this.”</p><p>“<em>Pond</em>. You know how dangerous it is to dive with someone who doesn’t understand the nuances of the Countercurrent. She could kill you. She could kill Rory.”</p><p>“She won’t.”</p><p>He sighs and slumps in exhausted defeat. “I don’t know if I can win this time, Amy.”</p><p>“You will.”</p><p>---</p><p>They’re all standing at the edge of the bottomless pool in B-012, and Clara’s heart is practically beating out her chest. She’s weighed down by a bulky, orange suit that’s more reminiscent of some old-school space gear than a suit made for diving, and some part of her thinks that she’s really not ready for this. (She momentarily wonders what went through <em>his</em> mind when <em>he</em> stood here, and she’s shocked by how much things have changed since the first time she asked herself that same question in this same room).</p><p>Vastra, who’s the only one on the team without any special gear on, calls out to the whole room. “Countercurrent names, shall we?” She looks solemnly in her direction, and Clara understands that she’s doing this for her sake. “Mine is Veiled.”</p><p>Strax, who’s wearing a gray suit and holding a blue helmet with triangular eye holes by his side, places his free hand on his chest. “I am the Potato One.”</p><p>Clara <em>really</em> wants to laugh at that, but her nerves make it hard for her to catch her breath, and anyway, Amy and Rory speak before she has the chance to properly fill her lungs.</p><p>“I go by Melody.”</p><p>“And I’m the Centurion.”</p><p>Everyone’s eyes then land on her, and she swallows past the dryness in her mouth. “I’m Oswin.”</p><p>She turns to her right and sees Doctor Ghost geared up in a suit very similar to her own. His eyes meet hers as he speaks. “Twelve.”</p><p>Given all the ridiculous aliases he’d given her before, she’s shocked by the simplicity of his real Countercurrent name. She wonders if he chose it to match the number of this very room, this impossible gateway into another world that is somehow composed of the very same thing that builds his cells and runs through his veins. She thinks it suits him.</p><p>Bill, the last one to go, tries to shoot her an encouraging look through her own nerves. Her suit is a metallic gray with wrist-bound gadgets, and Clara thinks that it looks a bit like a space-suit, too. “You can call me Chips.”</p><p>Everyone nods conclusively at the finished introductions, and her hands tremble in anticipation and fear. She’s certain that everyone in the room is unbelievably scared. Even Doctor Vexed.</p><p>Vastra’s the first one to dive in.</p><p>---</p><p>There’s a reason why they call it the Countercurrent.</p><p>Deep below the surface, the water in B-012 swirls violently in complicated circles that Clara can’t see and doesn’t understand. The currents drag and jerk and pull her body from one place to the next.</p><p>She tries her best to regain control of her limbs and recover her sense of direction, but she starts to panic when she realizes that she can’t tell which way is up. This deep into the pool’s strange water, visibility is next to nothing, and the Countercurrent prevents gravity from feeling the way that it should. Her breathing starts to accelerate as her heart pounds, and she thinks that maybe she’d been too confident in her ability to take on this insane adventure that required skills that she frankly doesn’t have.</p><p>She’s on the verge of frightened tears when a large hand grips her own. Her breathing stutters. She can’t see who it is, but this person drags her gently onwards in one set direction. Trusting that it’s someone from her team, she swims with the guiding hand in her own, and her heart rate begins to normalize.</p><p>They swim and swim and swim in pitch black waters, and Clara swears that her confused sense of direction fully inverts at one point. Somehow, it feels like they’re swimming upwards now, which is wildly disorienting, given that they’ve been diving downwards into the infinite depths of B-012 for what feels like ages.</p><p>Eventually, the blackness fades into dark blue, which then fades into lighter blue, and Clara finally learns that the person who helped her navigate the dangerous, mind-bending waterscape was none other than Doctor Disco.</p><p>Her hand stays firmly in his until all of them break the surface of the water at the other end of the Countercurrent passage, and she takes comfort in feeling his long fingers wrapped around her own.</p><p>(She’s proud of herself for having known that they’d been swimming up towards something, but she tries not to think about how impossible it is that diving downwards somehow led to swimming upwards without a physical change in direction.)</p><p>---</p><p>They emerged from the water in some sort of subterraneous port town, and she’s overwhelmed by the sheer number of new things going on around her.</p><p>First of all, she sees that Vastra didn’t wear a suit because her tattooed scales are actually <em>real</em> scales, and they evidently only make their appearance when she’s in the Countercurrent. (Clara wants to ask questions about every other tattoo that she’s seen in her life, but she’s very quickly distracted).</p><p>The team begins to walk down a rickety boardwalk towards a hut that sits directly under a massive stalactite, and no one else seems to be bothered by the fact that they’re surrounded by creatures that all look bonkers and very much not human.</p><p>Her fingers reach for a camera bag that’s not there, and she forgets to keep walking. She sees creatures with a range of different skin colors, with necks of all sizes, with claws or webbed fingers, with extra eyes or no eyes at all, and a general mess of features that she’s never seen before in her life. They’re all either trading goods or stealing them or offering strange services, and she thinks that nothing at all could have prepared her for <em>this</em>.</p><p>She’s startled from her thoughts by a gentle tugging on her hand. Doctor Ghost. “Come on. Remember the rules. Don’t wander off.”</p><p>She turns away from the spectacle and nods, content with feeling his hand in hers.</p><p>---</p><p>“My, <em>my</em>. You’re a pretty one aren’t you? Of course, your eyes are a touch too big for my taste, but really, you’re not so bad for a family pet.”</p><p>Her heart leaps up into her throat. Right now, the team is talking to the brazen woman with the curly hair in an entirely different part of the hut, and Clara knows that she’s utterly alone, halfway through taking off her diving gear.</p><p>“You know, it’s such a relief being able to talk to you now. It was so <em>boring</em> only looking in on you.”</p><p>Suddenly, she can smell the revolting combination of lavender soap and rotting fish—simultaneously extremely alarming and grossly familiar. She whips her head about, surveying the space to try to spot the mirror that would bring this woman into the invisible folds of the room.</p><p>“Those drab, gray sheets really put a damper on all the fun. Terribly ugly things. This is <em>so</em> much better.”</p><p>She frantically rips the rest of her suit off and begins to pull open every drawer in sight, trying to find the mirror.</p><p>“Oh, don’t fret, dearie. There’s nothing that the old spoilsport can do now to stop me from finding you. I have so much more power here. He shouldn’t have brought you.”</p><p>She’s about to call out to the rest of the team when she finally finds a small, handheld mirror at the bottom of a desk drawer. Over her reflection’s shoulder, she looks into the untamed eyes of the lady in purple.</p><p>“Do you know who I am?”</p><p>Clara doesn’t respond. The woman rolls her eyes.</p><p>“I’m Missy. Short for Mistress. <em>The</em> Mistress, to be more exact.” She winks salaciously.</p><p>Clara throws the mirror against a wall and shatters it. As she runs out of the room and turns down the corridor, a narrow, bony chest slams into her face. Just the man she was looking for.</p><p>He gazes down at her with concerned eyes. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“Missy. Mistress. The woman in the mirror. We were right. She’s the Master.”</p><p>---</p><p>She wanders off.</p><p>As the team interrogates a big, red tentacle of a creature at these underground docks (as per the recommendation of the curly-haired madwoman), she swears that she hears someone trying to get her attention. Her eyes scan the varied crowd, but no one in particular seems to be watching them or paying them any attention, and no one else on the team seems to have heard anything.</p><p>When she hears a distinctive ‘<em>pssst</em>’ right by her ear for the fourth time, she decides to follow the sound. In the back of her mind, she imagines just how furious Doctor Vexed would be with her for having broken one of his cardinal rules, but she goes ahead anyway.</p><p>Reckless curiosity and was never one of her better qualities.</p><p>---</p><p>Clara’s hiding in a tiny nook that she found along the wall in a dank, dark passageway. Her breathing is heavy and she can feel her heartbeat in her fingertips, but she’s trying her very best to focus on <em>listening</em>.</p><p>All she can hear is the sound of water droplets falling into a puddle and the disorienting echo that they create in the cavernous space that she’s stumbled into. She’s not sure what she’s expecting to hear, but she knows that her other senses won’t serve her now. The darkness that’s swallowed her up is so full and so oppressive that she can’t effectively sense direction or time or her own body anymore.</p><p>In the consuming darkness, she finds herself desperately longing for the strangely reassuring company of a certain miscreant wraith. Even in all his madness, he helps her make sense of all of the incongruous things in this other world, and he makes her laugh, and she wants nothing more than to hear that gruff voice of his say ridiculous things and to squeeze his skinny, cool fingers. Fueled by nothing but gut-feeling and instinct right then, her desires surprise her, but she’s far too scared and too preoccupied to dissect them.</p><p>She presses the heels of her hands harshly against her eyes in an attempt to stop herself from crying and to see those colorful patterns that manage to be less dark than her surroundings. They augment her deep sense of disorientation as opening her eyes somehow makes things darker, but she presses harder to watch stars form behind her eyelids anyway.</p><p>Then, she stops.</p><p>She might have heard something. She opens her eyes to blackness and pauses her breathing.</p><p>Drip. Echo. Drip. Echo.</p><p><em>Splash</em>.</p><p>She urgently presses her body against the wall at her back and forces herself to calm down. Maybe company isn’t the worst thing right now?</p><p>She shakes her head. No. Wrong. Rule number two. She can’t trust anyone outside of their party. Breaking the rules is what got her in this position in the first place.</p><p>Heavy footsteps begin echoing around her. She hears the distinctive clanking of metal. Her pounding heart makes it hard to breathe.</p><p>She thinks about it for two seconds before she steps out of her hiding spot and fruitlessly turns to look in every direction. Right. Perfect darkness. She places her right hand against the wall and begins to carefully step in what she desperately hopes is the direction that will lead her <em>away</em> from the thing that’s stomping about. (The echoes make it hard to tell where the sound is coming from, but she tries her best to ignore both her panic and the suddenly overwhelming need for the company of one very cross ghost).</p><p><em>Splash</em>. <em>Stomp</em>.</p><p>Closer? Farther away? As she comes to a turning point, she feels the hand that she’s been gliding against the damp, cavern wall begin to violently tremble. Her breathing speeds up. Right. Okay. What would <em>he</em> do? (Some minuscule part of her realizes that ‘<em>he</em>’ is a reference to Doctor Idiot now, and her heart constricts the tiniest bit. No time for that).</p><p>Her mind, absurdly, hops back to a lesson and a storeroom and a night full of right turns, and she nods decidedly to herself, breathing out.</p><p>She’s just going to turn right. Because maybe <em>he</em> would do something equally as stupid.</p><p>---</p><p>She’s been stumbling about and turning right in perfect darkness for some indeterminate amount of time when she feels her foot accidentally kick something.</p><p>The painfully loud sound of the object scraping across the cavernous ground reverberates all around her, and she instantly stops all of her movements, spine stiff. She listens.</p><p>Drip. Echo. Drip. <em>Stomp</em>.</p><p>The thing that’s following her is still wandering about in this maze of a cave, but it doesn’t seem to have picked up its pace. She hopes that it’s as disoriented by the echoes as she is.</p><p>Silently and <em>very</em> slowly, she squats down and stretches her hands out in an attempt to locate the object that she’d almost stepped on. Her hands begin to shake when they fail to encounter anything but cool air, and she tries to take a steadying breath.</p><p>She <em>didn’t</em> imagine it. She <em>knows</em> she didn’t.</p><p>Pivoting her feet from left to right, she leaves her arms extended and finds nothing but the cavern wall at her side. Her throat begins to feel tight and her eyes begin to burn, and she tries her best to take another deep breath.</p><p>Gently, she lets her extended arms fall to her side. When her left hand unexpectedly lands on something smooth and sticky on its way down, she barely manages to contain her surprised yelp.</p><p>She grabs the object and maps it out with her hands. Her brow furrows, and her fingers thoroughly inspect it a second time. No. This can’t possibly be right. Warily, she brings her sticky fingers up to her nose and sniffs them.</p><p>Tangy, sweet, orange marmalade.</p><p>Manic laughter bubbles up in her chest when she realizes exactly what it is that she’s holding, and she desperately bites her cheek to keep quiet.</p><p>A <em>plate</em>. Covered in <em>marmalade</em>. One of <em>his</em>, no doubt. She tastes blood from biting her cheek so hard.</p><p>Somehow, she’s now absolutely certain that those plates, the ones that <em>he</em> left in those disappearing and reappearing corridors, were always meant to test some sort of strange dimensional connection between this maze of a cave and their labyrinthine base. <em>This</em> was what his ‘research’ was all about.</p><p>She simultaneously wants to hit him and hug him for being such a brilliant idiot. She finds herself wondering if he ever figured it all out, whether he ever got far enough in his work to solve this puzzle.</p><p>Then, she recalls that she’s very lost and entirely unsure of how she got that way, and she refocuses. The plate means something. She just has to figure out if it can help her.</p><p>---</p><p>As she trips over her fifth plate in the maze’s perfect darkness, she begins to suspect that she might be getting close to something. The air is different, now. It smells less like wet earth, and the echoes have changed.</p><p>Clara’s breath catches in her throat when she hears <em>his</em> voice.</p><p>“I don’t care! She’s <em>lost</em>. I told you we shouldn’t have done this—I <em>told</em> you that she wasn’t ready, and now she’s <em>lost</em>. I have no idea where she is.”</p><p>Underneath her shock at how genuinely scared and angry he sounds, she realizes that his voice is oddly muffled, like she’s hearing it through a stuffy pillow.</p><p>“Yelling at me doesn’t solve any of our problems.”</p><p>“Don’t you understand? I don’t even know how to <em>begin</em> finding her. You know that the Master isn’t the only dangerous thing in the Countercurrent. I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight…”</p><p>As Clara carefully follows the sounds of the argument, she realizes that she’s starting to be able to see. Though there’s not enough light for great visual detail, she can make out rough outlines, and she’s incredibly relieved to find that she didn’t actually go blind in all of this.</p><p>The light gets brighter, and the voices get louder until she eventually stumbles upon a spacious room with at least eight visible entries. Floating at its center is something that looks a bit like a three-dimensional window, except that it has no frame, and its edges glow a vibrant golden (the color reminds her of the sparkling energy that she’d seen flow through <em>his</em> hands). It becomes clear that this strange window is the only source of light and the origin of the familiar voices.</p><p>Hesitantly, she walks towards the glowing box, and tears gather in the corners of her eyes when she finally arrives in front of it. Through this weird, floating thing, she can see <em>him</em>, pacing back and forth and pulling at his hair.</p><p>There’s something about feeling like she’s been entombed that makes her indescribably relieved to see his frenetic energy and his unassailable signs of life. She revels in the familiarity of his fevered pacing and his very cross frown.</p><p>“Doctor Ghost,” she whispers the secret name that she uses for him in her head, and watches as he stutters in his step.</p><p>He stops biting on his thumb and slowly looks up from his old boots. Apparently, he can’t see her, and his eyes betray a dreadful fear of the possibility that he’s started hearing things.</p><p>“Yes, you. Doctor Disco. The Eyebrows.”</p><p>She watches his face break out in a massive, relieved grin. “Ah. The Asking Questions One.” Then, he seems to remember their current situation, and his face transforms into a viciously troubled scowl. “Are you okay? Where are you?”</p><p>Her attention is finally pulled away from him when someone else speaks up.</p><p>“Who the bloody hell are you talking to?”</p><p>It’s only then that Clara realizes that no one else can hear her voice. Amy and Bill are staring at him like he’s finally taken leave of his senses.</p><p>“Shush, shush, shush. I’m talking to The Not Me One. The one that eats all my biscuits and drinks all the tea.”</p><p>Amy and Bill exchange looks that clearly communicate that his declaration doesn’t exactly clear the air or make him seem less barmy. Vastra seems to understand, though. She always seems to understand him (better than most, anyway).</p><p>“He’s referring to Oswin.”</p><p>“But why? She’s not here.”</p><p>“Yeah, she’s lost. He just said so himself.”</p><p>He’s evidently not concerned with their discussion. He’s frowning expectantly at the air to Bill’s left, and Clara realizes that he’s trying to direct his frown in her unknown direction. He repeats his questions.</p><p>“Are you okay? Where are you?”</p><p>“I’m fine, but er… I don’t know exactly. It’s like a maze, but I can’t remember how I got here.”</p><p>“Describe it to me.”</p><p>“I don’t think I can. It was pitch black, and I couldn’t see. All I could hear was the sound of dripping water and the sound of something following me. Heavy footsteps and clanking metal. Echoes.”</p><p>“Interesting.” He glowers as he considers the information.</p><p>“You know, I think this room is special. I found a bunch of your daft experiment plates as I made my way here. Was this what your research was for?”</p><p>“Plates?” His eyes go comically wide before he smirks the tiniest bit to himself. “Ah. Scary, handsome genius. Of course.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You’re talking to me, yes? You can see me?”</p><p>“Er, yeah. It’s this weird window box thing.”</p><p>“You’re looking through a space manipulator!" She watches him snap his fingers. "Old world hopper technology. I know of only one place that still has one.”</p><p>“Great. Tell me how to get out of here.”</p><p>“It’s not that simple. The Countercurrent is a strange place, and space manipulators can make their surroundings change shape. They can even reach across worlds. It’s how my plates got to your maze, and it’s probably how Missy was able to use the mirrors.”</p><p>“Right, so I’m basically stuck in a creepier, more dangerous version of our base. What the hell am I—”</p><p>“Stop. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m an idiot!" He scowls furiously at himself. "You said something was following you. Is it still—”</p><p>She’s startled out of staring at him when someone speaks from behind her and cuts him off.</p><p>“Hello, pet.”</p><p>A cold, terrified shiver runs down the length of her spine at the overly saccharine tone. She clenches her fists and turns around. She wonders at the fact that she hadn’t picked up on the smells sooner, and she reprimands herself for having stopped <em>listening</em>.</p><p>It’s Missy. And she’s accompanied by a metal man.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Okay lads, last one. Hope its halfway decent!!  (I rewrote the beginning of this chapter like 6 different times, and even now I'm not happy with it, but it's the happiest I've been with any of the versions I wrote. Who knows, maybe one day I'll come back and revamp it).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Clara’s mind is <em> racing</em>.</p><p>And she does mean properly racing—where she can’t keep up with the speed of her own thoughts and a maelstrom of emotions is ripping through any kind of logic she thought she possessed.</p><p>She’s angry.</p><p>No. She’s beyond that. She’s absolutely certain that she’s <em> never </em> felt such an overwhelming sense of pure and unadulterated <em> rage</em>.</p><p><em> ‘Oh dearie, have you not paused to wonder why no one ever says your dead boyfriend’s name? Why you can’t whisper it to yourself anymore? Why you can’t even </em> remember <em> it?’ </em></p><p>Over and over and over, her mind replays Missy’s most recent comments with vivid clarity. Despite the fact that this conversation started no more than ten minutes ago, Clara already finds herself frozen and speechless with shock and feral emotions. Her head is buzzing.</p><p><em> ‘After the boy fell in love with an average, boring human—I </em> am <em> referring to you, by the way—he practically stopped his world hopping and forgot his own rules. So one day, I learned his name. His </em> real <em> name. Naturally, because I’m quite evil, I stole it from him. Robbed him of his essence and the golden energy that ran through his pretty little veins. Ended his life, just like that!’ </em></p><p>The image of Missy sneering and laughing insists on flooding her brain. On some level, Clara desperately wishes her mind would just slow down, but right in that moment, she truly wants nothing more than to murder the deranged Mary Poppins who’s standing in front of her, smiling. Not figuratively, either. She wants to genuinely, truly kill her for thinking that this was all some kind of game.</p><p>
  <em> ‘Anyway, I possess his name now. When I stole it from him, I stole it from the world, too. It’s why no one can remember it. As long as I have it, his world hopper energy will be added to my own, and as long as it’s mine, I’ll be as powerful as two of us!’ </em>
</p><p>As she starts to fully process the awful things that Missy had said, Clara feels herself vibrating out of her skin with a mounting fury. She’s now decided that she’s fully prepared to lose everything in an attempt to right this horrible wrong because she can’t believe that this is how he died and that this is the person who did it and that no one ever bothered to tell her that he wasn’t even human.</p><p>She’s on the verge of taking a storming step towards Missy when, suddenly, a familiar set of long, skinny fingers very hesitantly touch her own.</p><p>(She’d nearly forgotten that she wasn’t actually alone. That Doctor Ghost was standing right beside her. That he had gone and done something incredibly stupid with the space manipulator just so he could be here to help her).</p><p>She hears his familiar Scottish brogue speaking softly by her ear.</p><p>“I know how you’re feeling right now. The white hot rage, the suffocating pain, the unmanageable grief.” He pauses. “The single-minded need for revenge.”</p><p>She’s breathing heavily and her nostrils are flared, and even though he’s speaking calmly into her ear, her vision is still painted in a furious, violent red. She can’t take her eyes off of the madwoman who’s now laughing herself to tears while leaning against a metal man for support. Her rage blazes hotly at her core, burning her up from the inside.</p><p>“Listen to me. <em> Listen</em>. Revenge won’t help you. Hate is always foolish. If you really do kill her, his name will be lost forever and so will <em> you</em>. Killing her won’t bring him back. It won’t even make you happy.” He takes a breath and fully weaves his fingers through her own, attempting to ground her. “We can’t bring him back to life. But maybe, if we do this right, we can steal his name back. We can put it where it belongs—in all your favorite memories with his floppy hair and his stupid bowties. We can return his essence to the people who loved it the most.” His cool thumb glides against her own. “<em>You </em> can do that. I can help you.”</p><p>Clara finally turns away from Missy and looks up at the piercing blue-gray eyes that had become so familiar to her over the course of the last few months. Her vision returns to normal and her breathing slows and it’s only now that she fully realizes exactly how much she underestimated this grumpy mop of gray hair. She tenderly squeezes his fingers.</p><p>A loud, theatrical huff interrupts their moment of relative peace.</p><p>“What is <em> this</em>? Are you two <em> friendly </em> or something? Ergh, don’t ruin my mood.” Missy pretends to gag at the sight of them. “I didn’t think Eyebrows was even capable of affection. What a waste.”</p><p>Clara might not be out of control anymore, but she’s still unbelievably livid, and she’s fairly certain she’s just remembered something that might give them the upper hand.</p><p>“Three. Earlier, you said you needed <em> three </em> world hoppers’ energies to transport your metal army. If you’re one, and you stole the energy from another, that means…” It all suddenly clicks, and she tilts her head towards Doctor Ghost. “You need <em> him</em>. You need his energy. That’s why you brought me here. <em> He’s </em> supposed to be the third hopper.”</p><p>And then something else suddenly dawns on her.</p><p>“But you can’t steal his energy, can you? Because you don’t know his name. That’s why you keep calling him Eyebrows. That’s why you haven’t killed him already.”</p><p>“My, my, you’re really quite clever for a human! Good for you!” Missy exaggeratedly winks, twirling her old-timey, black umbrella by her feet. “You’re right, of course. I don’t know his name. But that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”</p><p>Openly inspecting them from head to toe, Missy begins to circle around them. Clara’s fingers twitch, but neither she nor Doctor Vexed say anything.</p><p>“You see, you’ve been so terribly useful so far, dear. Truly! Playing the role of the bait <em> so </em> perfectly that this twit broke <em> all </em> dimensional rules to jump backwards through the space manipulator was something that even <em> I </em> couldn’t have predicted. Priceless! I mean, sure, Eyebrows here has always been a moronic, <em> arrogant </em> rebel, but that little stunt could have killed him! It could have shattered all the connections between worlds! What does that say about <em> you</em>, Miss Oswin?”</p><p>Clara feels him very gently pull on her hand as if to reassure her that he’s still there and that nothing’s gone terribly wrong for them quite yet.</p><p>“It looks to me,” Missy continues, “like you’re the ultimate key to his downfall. Now, you’re just going to finish it all off. You’re going to give me his name.”</p><p>The knowledge that she’d inadvertently gotten him trapped in the center of this maze with her already makes Clara feel guilty, but the very <em> idea </em> of giving up that last little bit of him—the name that makes him who he is and keeps him alive—is so absolutely <em> abhorrent </em> to her that it makes her nauseous.</p><p>“No. You’re wrong. I would never betray him.”</p><p>The madwoman rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes, I get it. You’re both super repressed about your feelings. I don’t care. You won’t have a choice! What good is a metal army if you can’t use them to get a name?”</p><p>The metal man that had been standing idly by during this whole conversation now stomps to Missy’s side. The unhinged lady in purple maintains eye contact with them as she gives it its orders.</p><p>“Do whatever is necessary to get his name from either one of them. Keep him alive for now. Do whatever you like with her.”</p><p>The metal man instantly begins to stomp in their direction, and Doctor Ghost yanks at her hand, taking off towards one of the many dark passageways that lead away from the spacious room. He’s running them right into the maze.</p><p>“Where are we going?!”</p><p>“Into darkness.”</p><p>---</p><p>The black nothingness of the maze simultaneously makes her feel like she’s running about in an infinitely large space and being crushed by a heavy darkness that presses up right against her skin and fills her lungs when she breathes. Clara thinks it feels like flying and drowning at the same time, and the only reason she hasn’t fallen into a panic is because she can still feel his hand in hers and hear the sound of his heavy boots hitting the ground as they run.</p><p>They’ve been wildly rushing through the perfect blackness for some time now. She doesn’t know exactly how long they’ve been at it, but judging by the burning in her lungs and the exhaustion in her legs, she imagines that they’ve been running for quite a while.</p><p>Ever since they entered the damp tunnels, they've been surrounded by the sound of clanking metal. They’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t simply an effect of the echoes and that they are, in fact, being chased by a veritable army of metal men. It’s only through sheer luck that they’ve managed to evade them, but Clara’s lungs can’t handle the running anymore. Her legs are trembling.</p><p>“Oi, break.” She tugs back on his fingers in the dark and comes to a stop. “What’s your plan? Why run into the maze?”</p><p>“Time. I need more <em> time </em> to figure this out.”</p><p>“So we’re just stalling? What do we do if we’re found?”</p><p>“... I don’t know.”</p><p>“What do you mean you <em> ‘don’t know’ </em>? She wants to kill you! Shouldn’t you be more concerned?”</p><p>A quiet huff. “No. This isn’t about me. I’m only stalling for time to save <em> you</em>.”</p><p>Clara feels her pounding heart skip a beat. She simultaneously wants to hug him and hit him over the head for being so senseless. She settles for more firmly lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand. “Okay. So what can we do? How can we stop the metal people?”</p><p>“The cybermen are under her control. If we take away their commander, we can suspend their programming.”</p><p>“Right. And how do we do that?”</p><p>“The bracelet she was wearing, it’s powered by world hopper energy. Typically, no one should be able to power it on their own.” He pauses, and Clara imagines that he’s pulling at his hair. “The only reason she can use it is because of the stolen energy. <em> His </em> energy.”</p><p>She frowns. “You said we can steal his name back.”</p><p>“… Yes.”</p><p>“Were you lying?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Were you right?”</p><p>“I don’t know.” He sighs. “<em> Time</em>. I just need more—”</p><p><em> Stomp </em> . Echo. <em> Stomp, stomp, stomp. </em></p><p>Clara whips her head from left to right and spots blue lights at both ends of the otherwise perfectly dark tunnel. They’ve been cornered. Her heart begins to beat faster than it ever has, and she’s absolutely certain that right then, she’s living the last few moments of her life before her inevitable death.</p><p>“So much for more time, eh? Guess I’ll finally get to test my tae-kwon-do skills.”</p><p>“This isn’t funny. You can’t possibly be so reckless! They’re under strict commands to keep me alive. They’re under no such orders for you.”</p><p>The cybermen are now actively stomping towards them, and she swears that she can actually hear the way that Doctor Disco is frantically whipping his head from side to side, gauging their distance from their harbingers of doom.</p><p>“I don’t know how to get out of this,” he admits in a panic, voice laced with a manic desperation that Clara’s never heard from him before. “I don’t know how to save you.”</p><p>His fear sobers her.</p><p>“It’s okay,” she whispers, trying her very best to be brave. “My death. It was never really going to be all that important, was it? It’s alright. You need to go out there and help people. Missy’s still here. She’s still gleefully planning to watch the world burn, and you can’t let her. You have to stop her. Okay?”</p><p>The cybermen are close enough now that their blue lights are starting to make Doctor Ghost visible. She didn’t think that she’d ever wish to remain in the perfect darkness, but the devastating look that she can now see on his face almost gets her there. It absolutely crushes her. It makes her chest clench painfully, and it makes dying an impossible choice.</p><p>She wishes she didn’t have to do it. But she’ll be damned if she doesn’t do it right.</p><p>“Just remember me, yeah? Even when you don’t want to. Promise me.”</p><p>And then. <em> Then</em>. Something impossibly bright, something almost exactly like hope springs up in his eyes.</p><p>“You know what I hate about the obvious?” He’s on the verge of <em> smiling</em>. “Missing it!”</p><p>“What are you on about?”</p><p>“Memories! <em> This </em> is how we steal his name back. This is how we <em> win</em>.” He bounces lightly on his toes. “Love. It’s not an emotion. Love is a promise. All you have to do is remember. Remember him.”</p><p>Clara’s not sure she follows, but her mind flashes back to one of the very last times that she saw him anyway. She’d just dropped him off at London Heathrow and he’d come running back out to the car to remind her to feed the ducks at their local park. She’d laughed and had promised that she would, and he’d smiled brightly back at her before running off.</p><p>“His name,” Doctor Ghost continues, the stomping drawing closer and closer. “It still lives inside of you. Because you loved him. Because, even though he’s not here, not everything ends. Not love. Not always.”</p><p>Her mind then skips back to the first time she met him. She can picture how young and silly and graceless he’d been with his floppy hair and his big grin and his obsession with his one and only fez. She focuses on the blue door in their flat—the one that she hasn’t touched since he died—and her mind jumps to waking up with him in their bedroom.</p><p>She thinks about jammie dodgers and bowties and tweed jackets with elbow patches, and she realizes that the gray-haired stick insect was right. Hate is always foolish, and love is always wise.</p><p>There are tears streaming freely down her face now. She’s moved by the bittersweet, nostalgic love that she still harbors for the man that she’d known in a life gone past. But, unexpectedly, <em> impossibly </em> , she’s <em> overcome </em> by a newfound, heartbreakingly tender love for this delinquent ghost who was prickly and strange and daft, but who nevertheless risked everything to help her and who somehow still managed to talk about love as if it were the answer to everything. Against all odds and expectations, <em> he’s </em> the one who’s helped her heal.</p><p>Yes. Despite the fact that she’s certain she’s about to die, she feels alive and free and <em> okay </em> for the first time in ages. She <em> remembers</em>. His name. It’s there now. In her memories, right alongside his big chin and his soft hair. It’s where it should be.</p><p>Closing her eyes, Clara whispers it into the tiny space between her and Doctor Ghost.</p><p>Not a bad way to die, all things considered.</p><p>---</p><p>Except, death doesn’t come.</p><p>It takes her a moment to realize it, but the loud stomping that had signaled her impending doom stopped. Slowly, Clara opens her eyes and peers down both ends of the tunnel. The blue lights on the cybermen have dimmed, and they’ve entirely stopped moving.</p><p>She looks up towards Doctor Vexed, and in the dim blue lighting, she finds him gazing at her with unabashed wonder written all over his face. Of course, it doesn’t last long. He quickly seems to realize something and tugs urgently on her hand.</p><p>“Come on, come on, come on! We may not have much time.”</p><p>He starts running down the tunnel past the frozen cybermen, and she follows with her arm stretched out in front of her, hand in his. Even though she’s relieved that they’re not being chased anymore, she doesn’t know what he’s referring to or why they’re in such a rush.</p><p>“Time for what? What just happened?”</p><p>“You’ve disrupted their programming! By taking his name back, I’m fairly certain you stole his energy too. Missy doesn’t have them now.”</p><p>“Okay… ” Her mind and her legs are racing to keep up. “So she’s not powerful enough to control them anymore. I saved us.”</p><p>“Yes, yes, yes. But they won’t stay still for long. They’ll reprogram, and there's no knowing what happens then.”</p><p>Clara’s only just gotten back into the groove of running without being able to see when she practically slams into the narrow back of Doctor Ghost. She lets out an annoyed huff as he lets go of her hand without an apology. She can’t see anything in the perfect darkness, but she can hear him rummaging through his pockets, evidently searching for something. He mutters crossly to himself and dumps things on the ground until he finally pulls out his wanted gadget.</p><p>As he flips the thing on and Clara sees tiny bulbs flash in all different directions, she actually <em> chuckles</em>. It’s the stupid, hyped-up calculator. The one that he said would track world hoppers. When the gadget finishes calibrating itself and one of its mini bulbs actually lights up, she feels herself smiling. This stupid thing is truly going to lead them back to Missy.</p><p>“You know,” she says teasingly, “I always thought your gadgets served no real purpose.”</p><p>“Well thank god you kept that to yourself.” He takes her hand again. “Come on!”</p><p>---</p><p>They rush back into the room at the center of the maze to find it in a state of utter chaos.</p><p>Missy’s body is slumped against a wall, unconscious, and there’s a golden glow pouring out from her hands and diffusing into the room. (Clara assumes that it’s his stolen energy finally making its return to the infinite connections between worlds, where it belongs).</p><p>More importantly, there are cybermen <em> everywhere</em>. Some are stagnant like the ones they left behind in the maze, but others have already started the process of reprogramming. These cybermen in particular seem to be in a general state of aimless aggression—some actively stomping about, others yelling ‘delete’, and some even shooting in random directions.</p><p>Clara turns towards Doctor Vexed and sees that his eyebrows are fiercely pushed together in a deep, concerned scowl.</p><p>“What’s going on?”</p><p>“The cybermen. They convert people. ‘Upgrade’ them. They’re rebooting to their most basic instincts. They’re going to kill everyone.”</p><p>He starts frantically pacing back and forth, biting his thumb, and Clara turns back towards the scene in front of them with a heightened level of fear. New cybermen are entering the room from the tunnels of the maze, and more and more of the stagnant ones are beginning to move.</p><p>She’s wildly looking around the room, trying to take in the shitstorm of danger they’ve just gotten themselves into, when her field of vision is abruptly cut off by a familiar, narrow chest. Doctor Vexed is standing in front of her, and as she lifts her head to ask him what he’s doing, she finds a determined, remorseful look in his eye. She almost instantly knows that he’s already decided what he’s going to do, and that it’s going to be something stupid and reckless and bloody selfless.</p><p>“Nope,” she says preemptively. “No. Whatever you’re thinking, absolutely not.”</p><p>“I have to do this.” He speaks in a low voice. “This is the universe asking for help. I have to respond. It’s what I’m meant to do.”</p><p>“Fine then. If you have to do whatever you’re about to do, fine. But I’m staying with you. We’re solving this together.”</p><p>A strange expression flashes on his face for a split second, but Clara doesn’t get the chance to try to decipher it. It’s gone in an instant, replaced by a look of frustrated resignation. Frowning, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his favorite, whirring stick-gadget, and hands it to her.</p><p>“Follow me.”</p><p>Gripping the stick-gadget tightly in her hand, Clara carefully follows Doctor Ghost as he weaves between cybermen and makes his way to the space manipulator at the center of the room. (She doesn’t know why he gave her his gadget, but somehow, amidst all her fear and confusion, his stupid buzzing tool reassures her).</p><p>Once they safely reach the floating box, Clara watches as he carefully touches its glowing edges with matching fingers, eyes closed in concentration. The golden light flows freely between his arm and the manipulator before gradually stopping as he opens his eyes. He pauses for a moment, as if considering something. Then, with his chin up and his shoulders back, he turns away from the box and gestures for her step towards it.</p><p>Brow furrowing in confusion, Clara steps closer and warily looks inside. Through it, she can see a corridor that looks eerily familiar, but she can’t instantly place it. Her mind is frantically flipping through all of the possible places it could be when it finally lands on the most obvious choice.</p><p>The base. He’s using the manipulator to show her the base.</p><p>And now she’s realizing that he’s not just using it to show it to her, but that he’s planning to use this strange technology to send her there somehow. She violently whips her body around, ready to rant and rave at him, but the fierce determination and overwhelming sadness in his eyes makes her pause.</p><p>She swallows as it dawns on her. He doesn’t want to do this. He feels that he has to.</p><p>“Don’t do it,” she pleads. “Whatever you’re about to do, don’t do it.”</p><p>“It won’t hurt.” He gestures weakly. “It’ll be nothing. You’ll probably just pass out for a moment.”</p><p>“And then?”</p><p>“And then you’ll wake up, and you’ll be fine. You’ll be <em> safe</em>. I’m keeping you safe.”</p><p>“<em>Why? </em> I didn’t ask you for that! I don’t want this. Let me stay.”</p><p>Instead of answering, he steps right up to her. He looks pained, a sad sort of apology resting at the corners of his mouth. Hesitantly, as if waiting to see whether or not she’ll push him away, he raises his hand and softly cups her cheek, gently running his thumb under her eye.</p><p>She didn’t realize she was crying.</p><p>He moves his hand away from her cheek and tenderly rests it on the back of her neck. Ever so slowly, he begins to lean down, taking in every detail of her face with a doleful, crushing intensity in his blue eyes.</p><p>Her heart skips a beat when she thinks that he’s going to kiss her—and for a moment, she swears that he considers it—but, instead, he moves steadily onward to speak gently by her ear.</p><p>“Names," he says. "They can save lives, too.”</p><p>He shifts away from her ear and softly rests his thumb against her pulse. Tenderly, he presses his lips against her forehead.</p><p>There are an infinite number of things that she wants to say, but as he pulls away and meets her gaze, she finds that she can’t say any of them. There’s an insurmountable lump in her throat.</p><p>“Clara. Clara ‘Oswin’ Oswald. Run like hell.”</p><p>A brilliant, golden light begins to pour out from his fingers and into her own, weaving dazzlingly between their bodies before sinking into her skin. And just like that, she <em> knows</em>. He’s giving her this part of himself so that she can live. He’ll be trapped here.</p><p>He offers her a small, broken smile.</p><p>It’s the last thing she sees before the world goes black.</p><p>---</p><p>As consciousness starts to seep into her, Clara becomes aware that she’s lying on a very scratchy set of sheets and that the room she’s in smells a bit like rubbing alcohol. She distantly hears people whispering, but she finds that she can’t open her eyes yet.</p><p>“Yes, but where <em> is </em> he?” A familiar voice. Amy, she thinks. “<em>She </em> made it back. Why isn’t he here? What if he’s <em> dead </em>?”</p><p>“I don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions, Amy.” It’s the beaky one this time. Rory. “Maybe he’s fine. He does crazy things all the time.”</p><p>“Yes, but—”</p><p>“Silence, fools. The boy is waking up.” And that’s the potato head. Strax.</p><p>As she hears this, Clara can feel her eyelids fluttering. Everything seems hazy. She can’t quite grasp what’s going on, but at least the team and their names are starting to trickle back into her working memory. Yes. Amy, Rory, Strax.</p><p>“Clara? Are you awake, mate?” And Bill. Lovely Bill. “ How do you feel?”</p><p>Clara’s still struggling to fully open her eyes, but through her squint, she can see that she’s in Strax’s examination room. Bill, Amy, Rory, and Strax are staring down at her from their positions around the bed, and when she rolls her head to the side, Clara can see that Vastra is standing by the wall with her arms crossed. The woman looks mournful but calm, like she’s accepting something terrible that no one else knows about yet.</p><p>“What happened, Clara?” Amy asks. “How did you get here?”</p><p>Without warning, her hazy mind is suddenly inundated with the image of a sad, broken smile. Doctor Ghost. This is what Vastra had somehow deducted. Her fuzzy memory is rushing to remember everything.</p><p>Clara wildly pulls herself up to a sitting position and forces her eyes wide open. The sheer intensity of the anger that’s suddenly kick-starting her brain is making her shake.</p><p>“That bloody idiot!” She slams her fist down on the mattress. “That overreaching, sentimental, selfish <em> idiot</em>. He just had to be bloody heroic, didn’t he? Yes, of course he did! Because he’s <em> kind</em>,” she spits the word out derisively, like it’s an insult. It vaguely occurs to her that this is not the reaction of a normal person, but she’s too far gone to care.</p><p>“Clara, take a breath,” Rory says. “You just woke up. You need to calm down.”</p><p>She ignores him.</p><p>“He’s so <em> arrogant</em>. No one bloody asked for the heroics, did they? I didn’t ask for that! How fucking dare he? How could he do this? <em> Why? </em> Why did he do this? … I… he…”</p><p>Clara goes limp as the wind’s harshly taken out of her sails. She’s realizing that she’s only incredibly angry because, above all, she’s heartbroken. Full of a soul-wrenching grief. Clenching her fists on the scratchy sheets, her eyes well up.</p><p>Amy, Bill, and Rory all exchange careful, questioning looks like they’re not entirely sure where her outburst came from. Vastra’s the only one who seems unsurprised. For a moment, they all awkwardly watch her cry until Bill kindly steps in, placing a hand over hers on the bed.</p><p>“What happened, mate?” Her voice is gentle. “What did he do?”</p><p>Clara takes a deep, shaky breath and begins to summarize everything to the best of her ability. She tells them about the maze and the space manipulator and facing the Master on her own. She recounts the sudden appearance of Doctor Ghost, their conversation with Missy, and their success in the maze. She tells them about the cybermen that were going to kill everyone.</p><p>She doesn’t go into any of the things she was feeling at the time, but a lump forms in her throat as she comes to the inevitable end of the story. The end in which he gives himself up to save her. The end in which he prevents her from dying with him as he tries to stop the universe from burning.</p><p>Everyone stares at her in quiet shock. Even Vastra.</p><p>“So what does this mean, then?” Bill asks the room at large.</p><p>“He’s gone? Just like that?” Amy’s desperately clinging to Rory’s arm, disbelief written clearly in her watery eyes.</p><p>Vastra steps closer to the bed, a curious glint in her eyes. “You said he gave you some of the golden energy that ran through him, yes?”</p><p>Clara nods.</p><p>“Remarkable. That should be quite impossible.”</p><p>“What? Why?”</p><p>“Energy can be forcefully taken from a world hopper, but it can’t be given. Especially not to a human.” Vastra looks at her with an intelligent understanding. “That thing that you’re feeling, the thing that saved you both while you were there, he felt it too.”</p><p>Clara’s floored. “But—”</p><p>“There had to be something that intimately connected you to each other. Something that neither of you could fully control. That’s the only way it could have worked.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Amy butts in. “But are either of you going to tell the rest of us what the hell you’re talking about?”</p><p>“It’s nothing, really,” Vastra responds. “Just that Clara’s extremely lucky to have made it back.”</p><p>As the woman moves to leave the room, Bill lunges to catch her arm. “But what about the Doctor?”</p><p>“Well.” Her blue eyes display an accepting sort of sadness. “We always knew that one day he would die or end up in some irreversible situation while trying to save the world. Perhaps his time has simply come.”</p><p>---</p><p>It’s 3:35 am, and Clara’s staring at the digital clock on the shitty microwave in the base’s common area. Her tea’s gone ice cold, and a half-finished jar of marmalade sits on the table in front of her, untouched.</p><p>She hasn’t slept in three days. She spends her nights sitting at this table, waiting for him to wander in and scowl at her for eating his marmalade.</p><p>He never does.</p><p>(She likes to imagine how frowny he would be if he ever came to learn that <em> his </em> tea time had well and truly become <em> her </em> tea time. Then, she just wishes she’d appreciated the unique comfort of his company back when the small hours of the morning were <em> theirs</em>. There’s only an ache there now).</p><p>---</p><p>She’s wandering aimlessly about the base as she fiddles with his stick-gadget. She still hasn’t figured out how it works, but she likes to hold onto it. The whirring sound it makes is so intimately tied to him in her mind that if she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine he’s right there next to her, saying something nonsensical about dimensions or yo-yos or the rhymes of physics.</p><p>She’s still unbelievably angry at him. But mostly, she just wonders at the fact that, against all reason, a person could come to love someone else almost entirely without knowing it.</p><p>(Sometimes, she imagines how he would react if she told him and laughs sadly when she pictures his raised eyebrows and gaping mouth. She likes to think that he’d go all bumbly and speechless because saying things is difficult. She tries her best not to think about the fact that she’ll never actually know).</p><p>---</p><p>As she rinses her toothbrush off at the bathroom sink, Clara looks into the fogged up mirror in front of her. She can’t really see her reflection because the steam from her shower condensed on the mirror’s surface, but she’s vaguely grateful for that. After four days of no sleep and little food, she’s certain that her reflection would be a hugely depressing sight.</p><p>It feels strange to stand here now, this place where it all really started. After all, it was Missy’s reflection in this very mirror that precipitated the whole bloody mess in the Countercurrent. The mess that ended so, so horribly.</p><p><em> ‘Names </em> . <em> They can save lives, too.’ </em></p><p>In her head, Clara regularly replays her last moments with Doctor Ghost. She tries to mentally document every detail that she can remember so that she’ll never forget them. The way he leaned in, his face, his hesitation, the way he uttered her name with warmth and a hint of sorrow, the golden light that she watched pour out of him. His smile.</p><p>She stares at her blurred, cloudy outline in the steamy mirror as she relives it for the thousandth time.</p><p>
  <em> ‘Clara. Clara ‘Oswin’ Oswald. Run like hell.’ </em>
</p><p>She’d never cared for her full name, but he made it an amazing thing. <em>Clara Oswald</em>. He used it to give her a part of himself. He used it to save her life.</p><p>Then, like a ton of bricks, it hits her. Right in the middle of the bathroom with her hair still dripping wet, it <em>hits</em> her. Maybe she can save him, too. With the help of this mirror and its weird connection to the space manipulator, with that unspoken thing that bound them, with his names, and with a world’s worth of rash hope.</p><p>Hands trembling, she sets her toothbrush down and starts to frantically write out all of his names in the condensation on the mirror, including the ones that she used for him exclusively in her head. As she writes them, she says the names out loud, trying her best to focus her thoughts on everything about him.</p><p>(In the back of her mind, Clara knows she must look like she’s finally lost it, but she can’t stop. There’s a power to be found in the multitude of names that all coexist for the same person. Something in the way that they all call to mind different moments and traits and feelings. Whether the names were chosen or given or discovered, they hold power, and Clara’s trying her best to find it. She doesn’t care if she looks like a nutter).</p><p>When she comes to the last name on her list, her hand drops weakly to her side. She pauses. The last one left is his actual name. The only one that really mattered to him. Some part of her hesitates to add it to her messy scrawl on the mirror’s watery surface because she’s afraid. If <em> that </em> name doesn’t do anything, nothing will.</p><p>“If you love me in any way,” she whispers, “you’ll come back.”</p><p>Taking a deep breath, she raises her hand and writes. <em> The Doctor</em>.</p><p>Closing her eyes, Clara focuses on the way that the space in the bathroom feels around her, trying her best to sense if someone else was there. When she realizes that she feels nothing more than painfully alone, she nearly starts panicking, but something stops her. A smell. Clara’s certain that she smells the tiniest hint of tea and marmalade and old books.</p><p><em> Him</em>. The Doctor. It has to be.</p><p>Hesitantly, Clara opens her eyes.</p><p>Her heart plummets when she realizes that she’s alone in her reflection. No one. There’s no one there.</p><p>All of her writing is now dripping sadly down the mirror’s surface, and as Clara stares at herself in its reflection, she thinks that it's all very appropriate. It matches her crying eyes.</p><p>---</p><p>She’s lying on her bed, idly playing with his whirring stick-gadget, when she hears it. Her whole body startles, and she sits up as quickly as she can, heart pounding. She holds her breath and wills her body to do nothing but listen.</p><p>After what feels like an age, she hears it again.</p><p>“Clara. Clara!”</p><p><em> It’s him</em>. That’s <em> his </em> voice calling <em> her </em> name. Her breath rushes out of her body.</p><p>Without hesitating, Clara drops the gadget on her mattress and practically throws herself off of her bed. She’s in her pajamas and she’s very much barefoot, but she’s already slamming her door open, tripping over herself in an attempt to run out of her room.</p><p>Heart pounding savagely against her ribcage, Clara races down the endlessly confusing corridors of the base, following the sound of his voice. Her feet and her exposed arms feel the effects of the cold air almost instantly, but she doesn’t care in the least because he’s <em> back</em>. He’s <em> here</em>.</p><p>She wildly runs and runs and runs, barely paying attention to where she’s going, until she makes a turn into a new, unfamiliar corridor that apparently leads to B-012. She stops dead in her tracks.</p><p>He’s there. He’s really standing <em> right there</em>, clothes all soaking wet, hair as wild as can be, and with a stupidly massive grin on his face. His eyes and nose wrinkle in unabashed joy at her arrival. He actually <em> laughs</em>. A brilliant, happy, impossible thing.</p><p>The sound snaps her out of her frozen stupor, and she sprints right at him. Right as she’s about to slam into his lanky body, he picks her up in a fierce hug, spinning her in circles. She squeezes her arms fiercely around him and lets herself revel in his solid presence. Her eyes are tearing up, and she buries her face in his neck, breathing him in and feeling his pulse.</p><p>He gives her one final squeeze before bending to put her down, and as her bare feet touch the frigid floor, she’s suddenly reminded that she’s actually incredibly angry with him for having been such a twit. She reaches up and indignantly smacks the back of his head.</p><p>“You bloody idiot! Why did you send me away? Why would you do that? You really are bloody daft, you know that? Do you have any idea what—”</p><p>Clara drifts off as she sees that her aggressive barrage of questions has only been making him smile brighter and brighter.</p><p>“What? What’s so funny?”</p><p>“Oh, Clara Oswald. I’ve missed you.”</p><p>He’s smiling down at her like she’s never seen before—with open fondness and barefaced delight—and her anger melts away. </p><p>She smiles softly in response and studies everything about him. His damp hair, his blue eyes, his funny nose, and his grinning mouth. She takes a step closer.</p><p>“You daft old man, I’m not going anywhere.”</p><p>And then, gripping the lapel of his sodden coat, she pulls him down and presses her lips softly against his. To her astonishment, he doesn’t hesitate to reciprocate. His lips move instantly against her own, and he cups her jaw. Her knees actually go weak. Instantly, his hands run down her back and steady her as they land securely on her waist. Breathing hotly against her mouth, he pulls her against his wet body and desperately moves his lips against her own. When his clever tongue begins to tease her, she parts her lips and lets him deepen their kiss.</p><p>She’s pleasantly surprised by how warm his mouth feels, and she gladly pushes her tongue past his lips. When she suddenly tastes something sweet and tangy against his tongue, though, she pulls back slightly and begins to laugh. A whole-hearted, joyous laugh.</p><p>(How he tastes like marmalade even now is beyond her, but it's one of the best things she’s ever had the chance to discover. Maybe he always tastes like this. The thought that she might get to find out excites her).</p><p>He steps back and frowns crossly at her, which only serves to make her even more ebullient. She hadn’t seen him frown yet, and she can’t find the words to express how insanely glad she is to be seeing it again. Her cheeks are hurting from smiling so intensely.</p><p>His frown eases as he watches her, and his eyes light up with playful mischief.</p><p>“You know,” he says, “I’m glad you have such a wide face. I don’t think I would have made it back without your narcissistic need for so many mirrors.”</p><p>“Oi!” She nudges his arm. “I didn’t even think the mirror thing actually worked.”</p><p>Smiling softly at her, he tangles their fingers together and rubs his thumb against her own. Instead of explaining, he flicks his eyes down, gesturing for her to look down at their hands.</p><p>She gasps. There’s a radiant, golden energy flowing between their fingers. The very thing that he’d given up to save her. It’s back. Her last-ditch effort in the bathroom must have returned some of his energy—at least enough of it for him to hop into the Countercurrent passage (which might also explain why his clothes are currently forming puddles on the floor). Even as she sees it with her own eyes, she can't really bring herself to believe it.</p><p>“Clara. My Clara. You saved me.”</p><p>She looks back up and earnestly matches his affectionate gaze with tears in her eyes. His energy is now a part of them both, tying them together and flowing between them as if they were one. It’s <em> theirs </em> now. She can <em> feel </em> it.</p><p>“I think I get it.”</p><p>He frowns, confused. “Get what?”</p><p>“Your name. The only one that matters to you.”</p><p>“Ah, yes. Keeps me to the mark. I’m The Doctor, and I save people.”</p><p>As she places her hand against his skinny chest and watches their golden glow flow freely between her fingers and his heart, she can’t help but agree with him. She’d initially come to the base to find some piece of a person who’d been taken from her too soon, and somehow, despite everything, she actually found it. This delinquent ghost of a man helped her recover a name that had been cruelly stolen from the rest of the world. And then, just because it’s who he is, he’d gone on to willingly trap himself in a maze full of metal men to help the universe and save her life.</p><p>He may be frowny and peculiar and occasionally tactless, but he’s a doctor through and through. He helps people.</p><p>“Yes,” she says. “You do.”</p><p>Gently, she slides her hand up from his chest and rests it against his cheek, meeting his intensely blue eyes. She’ll never tell him—because it would do nothing for his already massive ego—but he was right. Love is a promise, and love is always wise.</p><p>Placing his large hand over her own to keep it in place, the Doctor turns his head and softly kisses her palm. A silent promise pressed against her warm skin. Standing up on her bare tip toes, Clara cards her fingers through his damp curls and makes her own unspoken promise against his soft, sweet lips.</p><p>When she feels him smile against her mouth, she becomes absolutely sure of one thing: she’ll run and laugh and learn with him for the rest of her life.</p><p>(They’ll figure out the words eventually. They’ve got all the times in the worlds, now).</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I wrote an after credits scene that took place after this last one, and I was originally going to have it as the ending, but then this one just felt better (or at least less long, lol).  Thanks to the people who read this and commented!  And thanks for putting up with my self indulgent piles of bleh.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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